Fashion Project: How to shorten a dress

In my previous entry I mentioned that on last Sunday I would stay in and sew. And I did. Over 90% of vintage dresses that I purchased, I would shorten or/and tighten them. Well, last Sunday, I shorted couple of vintage dresses.

Firstly, lay the dress flat on a table. Take measurement tape and measure the desired length. Mark it using a chalk (specially for dressmaking, not blackboard chalk). Draw a line (with the help of a dressmaking ruler) and flip the bottom part over and run the chalk along the flipped part to mark the other side of the dress. From the first drawn line, measure at least 2 inches and mark it across the bottom part. This is what we called allowance.

Cut along the marking. Flip the top layer to expose the lining. Mark the lining by using the first line drawn earlier (which is only visible after cutting the rest of the bottom part). Cut along the marking. Lining is suppose to be shorter than the actual length of dress or skirt.

After finished cutting, you may send the dress to haberdashery shop to overlock or edgestitch the hem neatly. But I have opted to skip this part and sew as normal.

Take about 1.5 cm to 2 cm and fold the allowance of the lining inwards twice, secure the folding using a pin. Repeat until the all parts are pinned. For the actual fabric, with wrong side facing you, take about an inch and fold inwards, then fold again till the fold ends on chalk marking. Pin to secure the fold. Repeat until all parts are pinned.

If you have chose to edgestitch, just fold once and stitch or sew accordingly. If you do not have sewing machine, you may hand stitch the hem. Check out this video on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMqK-fNrCrM Since I have a sewing machine, I would sew onto the fold to finish the hem.

Once the sewing or hand stitching is done, the dress is ready for you to rock. Opps... this dress is a bit OL-ish though :-) If you would like to try alter your dresses, good luck and hope these are helpful to you.