Fixing an Aliexpress Dress

Last week I took my daughter (dramatic music!!!!!) Jeans Shopping.  For me personally, I hate jeans shopping.  I buy two pairs every three to five years and wear them until they fall apart.  Such is my distaste for the experience of going jeans shopping.  But last week wasn't about me, it was about my baby.  She received her initiation into the world of buying jeans, and it was, as expected, a trial by fire.  

Gone are the blissful days of you're 8 years old, so you wear a size 8 and there's an adjustable elastic band inside to ensure a proper fit and none of that awful back gap that happens when a girl squats down or bends over.  Now my daughter has entered the world of trying on tons of sizes and styles to find one that will fit not just in the store but by the end of the day.  I can't tell you how many times I've bought a pair of jeans that fit like a dream in the dressing room, but after two or three hours of wearing them they seemed to stretch out, leaving me with a low hanging crotch area that awkwardly makes a pop sound with every step.  Ugh!  Nightmare!

There are styles that are tight where they should be loose and loose where they should be tight, weirdly high or low or blousey, or puckery.  And no matter what size you're looking for, that's the one they don't have.....store after store after store.

Well, after hours of shopping and trying, and for some reason the only things we could find in her size were always just the one on the mannequin.  She found a nice pair of jeans and a pair of shorts, got them home annnnnnnd, you guessed it, the back gap thing happened.  She was frustrated and  downtrodden.  I told her to get used to it, this is what jeans shopping is like.  The next day, after some rest and a little distance from the shopping experience, she took matters into her own hands and put in two darts at the back of her shorts so that the back gap was gone.  I was super proud of her for taking a difficult situation and making it better.  

It seems that fashion trends gravitate toward a certain shape and no matter what that shape was, it was never mine.  As a result I've been altering and creating my own clothing since those troublesome teenage years when my curves appeared just in time for ultra low rise waists and skinny leg jeans.  Blech!  Now I often find myself with clothes that don't fit just right whether through poor designs, poor quality in the sewing, or just a style that needs a little tailoring to look good on me.

Recently I bought several dresses from Aliexpress and they were all fairly disappointing.  There were a couple of dresses (from the same shop) that came so close to being nice, but they both had these awful bra cups that were just giant foam disks. Sitting so low on my chest that they made me look flat and saggy, they looked awkward, they felt awkward and they didn't come close to fitting.  In the case of these dresses, the designs are stolen/copied, or however you want to say it, so I can't blame the designs because I know the originals fit like a dream.  I think it's just poor work, cheap materials, or an ignorance of how bodies change at different sizes, because these cups look like they belong on a dress that is several sizes larger.   They are shapeless and rather pointless as far as support is concerned.  But the dresses were so close to being nice that I really felt, with a little shape in this one area, they could be quite lovely.  So, like mother like daughter, I set to work to try to fix it.  

I started with the pink hearty dress and based on the neckline I selected a nude balconette bra (an old one that I didn't mind relegating to just using for this dress).  I lined up the cups just below the seam of the dress cups and pinned it to the center of the dress.

Then I used matching thread and whip stitched all the way around the perimeter of the bra, stitching it to the inside layer of the dress' bra cups so that the stitches would be hidden.

I did this all very quickly, it took about 15 minutes, just to see if my hunch was correct and that this dress was salvageable with just a little shape to these weird foam discs.  It's so interesting how just a few small changes can make such a huge difference in the overall look of a garment.

Immediately I was feeling hopeful as I looked at the new shape of the dress, but the real test was about to come because I did all this sewing just minutes before I left to wear the dress for photos.  Want to see how it turned out?  Join me right back here tomorrow to see the final result of this sewing venture.