You've found the perfect dress, you knew the moment you laid on eyes
on it. If you've ever been to a prom store during the peak of prom season, it's quite an experience. In some stores, only sales associates can touch the dresses -- those brave souls who accompany their teen are sent to the 'waiting' room while their beautiful, almost grown, doe-eyed babies walk to the dressing room with the sales associate.
A dress that was zipped up and secured, looks great from the front - modeled for a moment, getting a thumbs up from the entourage and breathing a deep sigh -- the hunt is over. For some, bringing the dress home and trying it on again can be a whole different story.
This is the story of a prom dress I recently worked on. The dress looked beautiful from the front but from the back it just didn't fit right. And it was a struggle to zip up, once zipped it curved and pulled - something not noticeable to the teen or her mom in the busy prom store.
There needed to be some room added to the dress, but not too much because the front of the dress fit and I didn't want to add too much to the back to make the front change. But how? It needed to be hemmed so I knew I had enough fabric from the bottom to work with the skirt of the dress but what about the bodice? I found tulle that when layered was a very close match to the dress. Since it needed room from the base of the neck to the waistline, I didn't think adding to the side seams would help across the base of the neck so I decided to add pieces to each side of the zipper.
This is the dress unzipped on my dress form.
First step was removing the zipper, carefully so I didn't create any runs or snags in the chiffon.
I made a pattern of the piece I needed for the bodice and placed it on the tulle. To get a close match to the original, I layered five pieces of tulle. Surprisingly, it didn't add any bulkiness and didn't look any thicker than the original dress.
Once cut, I stitched each new piece to the bodice. This is the first step in a french seam ~ a french seam is a three step process - 1) First you sew the seam wrong sides together 2) Trim close to the row of stitching and 3) Fold the piece together along the seam, right sides together and stitch again. A french seam is usually used when sewing light, easy to fray, fabrics such as chiffon. In this case, tulle is not easy to fray but I wanted to hide the cut edge. I could have trimmed close to the seam but thought a french seam would be stronger.
After trimming close to the first row of stitching, the two right sides were sewn together encasing the first row of stitching.
This is not a pretty view - still a work in progress. I wanted a continuous line from the added tulle to the pieces added to skirt and I wanted to make sure the zipper came together evenly. Once it did, I was not going to mess with it anymore and the puckered line in the chiffon was steamed and lightly pressed out after I finished beading.
I started beading at the waistline making flowers out of the larger beads.
Filling in with smaller beads and crystals as I went along.
I did not take a lot of pictures as I was beading because honestly I wasn't thinking about pictures, I was thinking about making sure I beaded as close to the original design as I could so it wouldn't be obvious that new beading was added. My hope was the end result would look like the dress was never altered. And the two seam lines along the zipper were there for design purposes only not because something was added.
I drew my pattern where I was going to place the beads with a water soluble marker, it made beading so much easier. The crystals are hot fix Swarovski Crystals - I love working with them because every time I add them, it just makes whatever I'm working on a little bit more elegant. To match the original beading, I just took a few samples to a craft store and matched them up. They are all hand stitched, nothing is glued in place except the hot fix crystals.
Thank you to this beautiful senior heading to her prom, I loved working on your dress!
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