dress hack

Imagine that moment when you realize the dress doesn't fit and the wedding is in 2 weeks.

My daughter is standing up in her friends wedding in August. When the dress came in after waiting 3 months, it did not fit.  It fit in the waist, but was about 3 inches of space between the zipper. It was not going to zip up.

The dress shop would not take fault and there was not another 3 months to wait for another.

The dress shop said, "There's some room in the zipper - just let it out." She called me frantic, and asked me to take a look. Once I figured out there was not 3 inches anywhere in the dress to be let out, we started reviewing our options.

A. Throw major hissy fit and cause a scene.

B. Look online for the exact same dress out of another dress shop.

C. Come up with creative solution.

It's really upsetting when you pay so much money for a dress and it doesn't even fit. The dress shop were idiots and made her feel bad, like it was her fault. That seriously pissed me off. They took her measurements and they ordered the dress.

After weighing our options, we decided to modify the dress converting the back into a corset style. We set out for our local Joann's and found some material to match. The picture lighting makes this look like a lighter color - but the fabric matched pretty well.

We didn't want the eyelets to stand out, so we found some nail polish and coated the eyelets so they were the same color as the dress.

Our shopping list was:

- 1/2 yard of fabric. This ended up being too much, 1/4 yard would have worked with plenty leftover.

- 3 yards of ribbon. We bought this ribbon because it was the only kind that matched. Again, this was way too much. We ended up cutting it in half.

- Eyelets

- Matching thread

Her total bill was $10.00, but we could have gotten away with just $5.00 of materials. Live and learn.

I started out by ripping the zipper out to the waist. Since the dress fit her to the waist, we kept the zipper and just shortened it.

I was even able to save the metal clip that keeps the zipper from coming off the teeth and reapplied it the top of the shortened zipper. Next, we put in a hem to secure the area where the zipper was.

I measured a square about 6x6 of the extra fabric. I sewed the hem all the way around, leaving a small area to be able to turn the fabric inside out. The corners were clipped to lose some of the bulk.

We test fit it into the area we needed to cover.

Using my handy eyelet tool, I added the eyelets to each side. Then I sewed the insert making sure the eyelets were free on both side. You can see the thread line on the left outside the eyelets. 

Using the tool, scrapped some of the nail polish off, so we need to repair the color. I also screwed up one of the colored eyelets, and ended up putting in a silver one. All can be touched up before wearing.

And ta-da! A wearable dress that actually fits her body exactly for about $10.00 in materials.

I think it turned out nice.

Happy bridesmaid ... happy bride too. 

It was the best solution, it allowed her to keep the same dress as everyone else and now she can breathe.

That girl ... never keeps a straight face for a picture. :)