DIY: Dress Alterations

    A few weeks ago, I published a post about adding a little length to one of my favorite Sparrow dresses.  It worked so well, I decided to do another by adding even more length to a dress that was even shorter.  I know I can't be the only person in the world to see a cute dress, try it on, and then hang my head as I walk back to the rack to hang it up because it was just too short.  
    I'm all for tailoring my own clothes, in fact I've been doing a lot of it lately, but that mostly involves removing excess fabric.  There's not much I can do where there isn't enough fabric.  What's the solution?  Three words:  Cotton.  Eyelet.  Border.  
    It's true that adding a lace border won't look right on every dress, but in the case of these cotton sundresses, I think it looks pretty charming.  Since this is a navy-blue/black dress, I started looking for black lace.  I wanted it to be cotton, since the dress is cotton, and I was looking for something 2-3 inches wide and found some available in three colors and at a width of 3.74", perfect for my project. 

I started by taking out the hemline.  I don't recommend taking the hem out of these dresses, because it can be really tricky since there's very little fabric to work with to create the new hem.  If you do decide to do this, you'll need to do it before you ever iron or wash the dress, preferably before you even wear it, because the bottom edge of the hem tends to fade quicker and will have a washed out crease that won't go away.

The next thing I did was to tack the eyelet border on and then sew it to the hem.  I like to attach it at the side seams so that the ends are masked better than if they wound up front and center.

The whole process only took about thirty minutes to complete and added about 4.5 inches to the total length of the dress.
...the result?  I absolutely love it!  I've admired this car print dress for a couple of years, but it was just too short. Now I feel comfortable wearing it even on a windy day like this one.

Shopping Info:  Vintage Cars Cute Retro Sundress, flats from Charlotte Russe