I was invited to a wedding! Like any woman, naturally I ran to my closet and tried on all my fancy cocktail outfits. It's been awhile since I had to dress up for anything and I wanted a dress that was a little glamourous and makes me feel confident! Unfortunately, none of my dresses cut it. I gained a little bit of weight (let's normalize fluctuating size discussions!) since the last time I had wore some of them and quite honestly I wanted something new!
Or at least, new to me! I ordered a few dresses from ThredUp to try on and fell in love with a sparkly, blue, floral, halter dress. It still had the tags even, the original price was a whopping $239! And no offense to the designer, but the quality of fabric and construction of the dress doesn't match the price tag. Most notably, the keyhole seam was separating between the lining and main fabric making a hole, the lining already has runs in it, and it is 100% polyester. Maybe the cost reflects the cost of the Jacquard woven fabric? At least it has roomy pockets and fits pretty well!
Well...that was a half truth, it fits my waist nicely but its a little too roomy in the chest, you can't even see the nice keyhole detail! But it's okay, I can fix that! I usually have to make adjustments to dresses (usually sheath styles) in the bust and shoulder area to correct odd gaping at the armholes. For this dress I'll show you how you can take in the sides to get rid of extra chest fabric. It may be a little more complicated with the key hole there but I think it will be manageable!
The more intimidating thing that I want to add to this dress is a built in bra! I hate being uncomfortable and in my opinion there's nothing worse than having to deal with a strapless bra or one of those ungodly stick on contraptions. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there's more options these days! But I never feel like I get enough support or if I do I can't seem to breath properly. I'm hoping I can cut up an old bra and sort of just baste it in, keeping the under strap intact. Ideally, I would keep the arm straps somehow but that's going to be tricky with that crossing halter situation!
If you have a dress that is too big on the sides and you want to follow along here's what you'll need!
Supplies:
Dress for altering (lined or unlined)
A bra that fits
Pins or clips (safety pins are really helpful!)
A mirror
General sewing supplies
You can approach the lining in a few ways
You can treat it as 1 fabric and sewing a new line on the right side of the lining (the side that touches your body). This is the fastest method but the extra fabric could show in your underarm if you take in a lot of fabric.
You can pretend the lining doesn't exist and only sew the outer fabric so that it sits smaller. This only works if you can flip the dress inside out and separate the lining away from the outer fabric without cutting or damaging any seams. This will mean that the lining is bigger than the outer garment and could cause some undesirable wrinkles or fabric bumps if the fabric is lightweight or shiny.
You can take in both the lining and the outer fabric, separately. Like with the option above, you will need to make sure that you can access both fabrics separately from each other. This will take the longest but will create the most professional finish.
I need to take my dress in on the sides quite a bit, over an inch. This is going to create a pretty decent amount of bulk that I think I will need to trim away regardless of which way I take it in. (Spoiler: I didn't have to trim anything!)
I think I can rule out method 1 right away, because I don't want to have this extra fabric visible, but I also don't want to trim it and add a zigzag edge which may be really uncomfortable against bare skin.
I think I am going to start by doing method 2 and see if I can do method 3 in combination with adding the bra. I'm not sure if the extra seam would cause issues to adding a bra, but we'll find out!
To find out how much room to take in, I tried the dress on and pinched the amount of fabric I wanted to remove, securing it with safety pins. Normally I would try it on inside out to do this, but the neck/outfit is too fancy to pull this off easily! I flipped my dress inside out and inverted my pinched fabric so it was pinched to the inside. I had to do this while pulling the lining up so I could see the raw seam of the outer fabric.
My lining was attached to the bodice with a few stiches, I cut these with my seam ripper so I would be able to work on the outer fabric separately!
After trying it on again with the new side seams pinned, sewed up the edges! Getting pictures of this process was a little challenging with the lining always being in the way! I decided to skip taking in the lining for this project, mostly because it was flowy and didn't impact the shape of the dress. If you wanted to, you could mirror the same line that you sewed on your outer fabric. I decided not to trim the extra fabric as it wasn't causing any issues for me!
Now for the tricky part: adding the bra!
For this dress, I chose an old underwire bra that was a similar color in case any edges accidentally show and a shape that suites the dress so I don't have to cut too much!
I chopped off the straps, right where they connect to the padding. Then I did lots of try ons and pinnings! Seriously, alot of trial and error here! This probably sat on my dress form for 2 weeks before I was able to figure out how and be brave enough to sew it!
The main thing that I learned was that I needed to give the bra plenty of flexibility to stretch despite it being sewn into a woven garment. I learned this the hard way when I went to try this pinned contraption and couldn't stretch the bra band to connect it due to the spot it was pinned! Hence you see the pins set farther back from the zipper.
I knew I needed to attach the bra in the front and at the back but I wasn't sure if I would need to sew in the sides or center front. I also knew I would need to hand sew the bra in because I didn't want to see random zigzag stitches
After some research on hand sewing techniques for stretchy fabrics, I found out about this catch stitch and wanted to give it a try! The tutorial is meant to be used as a blind hem technique but this actually makes it ideal for my project as the stitching won't show on the right side.
All the yellow spots are where I hand sewed the bra to the dress, going through both the lining and the outer garment. The center of the bra has a question mark because I wasn't sure if I needed to secure it so it would stay hidden below the keyhole. I actually tried sewing it at that point, but when I tried it on, it ruined the flow of the garment by making a dimple.
After picking out the center stitches I trimmed the cups so they wouldn't show. I thought about zigzagging those raw edges but decided against it mostly because I didn't feel like hand sewing anymore! Then my dress was ready to party!
I'm so glad I had a comfy dress to wear for the wedding and I had a blast dancing! If you decide to update your wardrobe using my tutorial, I'd love to see! Tag me on Instagram @Sunny_Salvage. Like Sunny Salvage on Facebook for updates and follow me on Pinterest for more upcycling ideas! Until next time!
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