TAKING IN A DRESS: SHOULDERS AND BUST

MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2013

Happy Monday friends.

It's mid day and I'm pooped already.

1) Woke up eager to get my kids ready for picture day,

which is always filled with a tad pressure to get them photo ready.

If I'm paying the money, we need quality shots which

a) will go into the yearbook,

b) be mailed out to family. 

Picture day's are also filled with reminders:

 not to get dirty,

 fix their hair or at least keep it neat UNTIL the photo is snapped 

and most importantly, SMILE GENUINELY!

Can't wait to see my cuties :)

2) M.S. our adoptive, giant of a daughter/student

has had some health issues and could not drive herself to the doctor this morning.

I got to play mom while her real mommy was away with her sister at a

different medical appt.

3) It's my typical laundry day. I'm getting to it, slowly but dreading it  :/

4) Working on Red Ribbon Week stuff for our school,

 (confirming order, getting ready to print and cut a load of papers/stickers, ect.) 

as it will be here before I know it.

HAPPY, HAPPY Monday,

I'm selling myself on the happy part hahaha

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Maternity dress: Thrifted $2.00 (Target brand)

BEFORE: Ignore the makeup-less, undid hair, me. The focus was the dress.
AFTER: Worn with a thrifted belt, tank & booties + a leopard bangle

This weekend was warm again, a perfect time to wear my "new" dress.

I thrifted it recently but hadn't worked on it yet.

It hung too low on my chest,

had an awkward bust area, with pointy/saggy features in the wrong, wrong, place haha

and the narrowest part hung lower than it should.  

Although it's a maternity dress,
the method should work for most dresses.

side view

Here's a close up of the sad bust

:(

 and the overall frumpiness of the dress.

Due to the low v-neck and ill fitting bust I decided to pull the area up.

L. I turned the dress inside out and began unstitching the black and red pieces.
T.R. I then separated the shoulders completely.
B.R. I cut 1/8th from the outer edges of the back piece and pinned.
(The back piece needed to match the width of the front as I was pinning them together.)
Then from the front pieces cut 1 1/4in. off.

L. I pinned the newly cut areas 

R. I sewed the center pieces and then the sides.

I also cut the black material to fit the new length of the shoulders.

I then pinned the black material and sewed by hand so that the thread would not
appear on the red side.
Not pretty but works.

NEW SHOULDERS
OLD BUST
The bust area was so loose and ill fitting.
After trying it on and working with the current pleats, 
I figured out what I could do to tame those points.

L. I extended the inner pleats all the way by the shoulders
and pinned.
The smaller outer pleats would be tucked in underneath the new ones.
R. Then I sewed it all down.

 The bust area is so much better now!

And just because,
I sewed it down the center a bit.
I can always undo it if necessary.