Fall Flowers Dress

I'm starting to get back into the swing of things after a few weeks of craziness, illness, and travelling, and boy, I've really missed you guys! And my sewing machine too! So what better way to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of autumn than to whip up a cute floral dress to wear with tights and boots? So I pulled out this Laura Ashley number from the clothes swap last month. It fit alright and was nice medium-weight jersey fabric perfect for cooler weather, but the skirt was a bit too long and the collar a lot too tight. Seriously, I could barely get my gargantuan cranium through that thing!

First off, a little trim-and-hem for the skirt.

Then I needed to widen that collar. So I placed the dress back on Rosy, and started carefully cutting around the old neckband, right up next to it in the back and then slowly sloping downward in the front. To make sure it was symmetric, I cut one side and then folded over the scrap to use as a template for the other side. Next, I left the dress on Rosy so as not to stretch out the un-finished edge and measured the new opening - 33 inches.

From the remnant of the skirt, I snipped off about 30 inches of the original hem. Using a strip slightly shorter than my neck hole will help the neckband lie flat better. Then I stitched the ends together to form a loop.

With the dress still on Rosy, I pinned my neckband in place, stretching slightly as I went around. Then I was finally able to take the dress of my dress form and stitch the neckband in place. Once that was done, I folded the neckband upward and top-stitched all around, reattaching the tag at the center back.

I wore my new dress today with a pair of evergreen tights ($7 Target clearance last spring), my favorite thrifted leather boots ($8 Goodwill), and my leather jacket (Wilson's Leather end-of-winter clearance a couple years ago).