A New Old Dress

Time to Complete: 1 hour
Sewing Machine Required? Yes
Difficulty: Difficult

I've had this dress since before my refashioning days, and it has always been one of my favourites. 

Unfortunately, it's getting old and tired, and it doesn't fit me nearly as well in my twenties as it did in my teens! Enter this massive piece:

Ok, so it doesn't look like much...yet

Not only is the print almost identical to my old favourite, the fabric is also the same cozy stretch knit! I knew at once that I was going to turn this too-big piece into a new version of my beloved but worn-out dress. To get there, I was going to have to make it much smaller. 

I started by putting it back on inside-out and measuring in from the sides how far I wanted to take it in.

I have a full handful of fabric on either side.

I marked the two narrowest points with safety pins, then took the dress off and lay it out on the floor. I knew I would probably have to take it in in several stages, so I wasn't concerned about getting it right all at once.

I drew the new shape of the dress onto the fabric with a charcoal pencil...

...stitched along the lines...

And tried it on again. There was still a lot of fabric bulk inside, since I hadn't trimmed the excess yet, but I wanted to make sure I was on the right track. I was! I just needed to take it in more under the arms.

I trimmed off the excess...

...drew a new line to take the sleeves and underarms in and stitched it down...

Then trimmed again. I tried the dress on again.

So far, so good, but the neck was too wide.

This photo gives an idea of where I stitched, but I redrew the line after taking the picture and forgot to take another. Just imagine the line curving better to follow the line of the shoulder.

The final step was to take a little bit of length off the bottom.

Nice slippers...

I hemmed the raw edge and did a quick press of all the new seams even though it didn't seem to need it much. Here's the end result:

Aside from the long sleeves, it's my old favourite reborn!

Criticisms: I shouldn't have cut the excess out of the underarms before adjusting the neck, since narrowing the collar also changed the fit of the sleeves a bit. Now it's just the tiniest bit too tight and I can't readjust because I cut out the extra fabric. Oh well, lesson learned!