Nothing better than flipping a Dracula-made-a-baby-with-a-circus-master dress into an overly fancy 50s vibe dress, to get over the fact that Christmas and New Year’s eve seem to have been cancelled this year.
I brought this dress nearly two years ago when I discovered ChineMachine, if you ever manage to travel again and get to Montmartre, it is a very good thrift store. The staff is mostly English-speaking with colourful hair and they leave you in peace to browse. I find there is nothing worse to enter a small shop and have an attendant hover close to me. I end up all sweaty and flustered and leave the shop with the speed of someone escaping a fire. Anonymity in shopping is bliss.
Other perks of this shop are the fact that they directly collect clothes and (after thorough inspection) they pay you half of the amount they will sell the item for, or give you a coupon for the whole amount to spend in the store.
When I found this dress it was too small for me, I brought it in a bound of confidence in my sewing skills, that two years ago were close to nil. The dress was handmade and taken in at the back for someone thinner than me. The fabric looks like silk and is berry red with a brilliant green woven into it, that gives it a Christmassy look.
The first thing I did was open the back seams and make it larger. This was possible thanks to extremely large seams that a magnanimous seamstress, presumably back in the 50s, left in. The project then got abandoned in my stash for a few months since I couldn’t quite understand how to put it all back together.
I recently watched a Masterclass by Marc Jacobs (really nice guy) and he says that the best way to start understanding style and fashion is taking a dress or a shirt to pieces and seeing how everything fits together. I must admit he is right. Having taken this dress to pieces I understand better how facing is supposed to sit. That was useful for the Chelsea collar shirt project, for example. In return, thanks to this challenge and all the things I have been making lately, I plucked up the courage to take a fresh look at the damage and stitched it all back up.
So here are the steps of the transformation:
2. One of the most tricky parts was to make the interfacing and the facing fit with the larger back. Joining the back and armholes with the facing was extremely fiddly, and in the end, I had to reduce the width of the end of the seam in the back quite drastically to make it fit again.
2. I then decided to change the collar to get rid of the Dracula look and make it more modern. I took off the back panel of the collar and sewed a straight line from the first button or buttonhole to the edge to give a clearer cut to the neckline.
3. Finally, I decided to change the buttons. The old ones were a weird bobbly transparent thing that my better half says look like miniature fish eggs. To me, they look as if they might have been coloured once, but the dye came out in the wash. I really like these black and beige buttons, they give the dress character.
4. The most boring part was re-stitching all the facing by hand. I discovered how to do an invisible stitch, at least I think I understood! And yes, I must admit I have cheated, the hem at the bottom still needs hand-stitching back together. I just couldn’t tear myself away from Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Anyone else is team Benjamin? (no spoilers please, I’m on season 2).
Voilà!
Behold the before….
And the after!
Crafty Poulette 