Selkie Alterations: Unicorn Defends Romantic Dress

As much as I love this print and style, as much as I love Selkie, not all the styles are right for me.  There are certain shapes that look best in the puff sleeves, the puffier the better, in fact, and the oodles of ruffles only enhance their figures.  Sadly, I am not such a person and have not such a shape.  When if comes to the ruffle puffs, a little goes a long way.  At a certain point, I just feel like I'm lost in a ruffled organza sea drowning in puffs.  That is one of the reasons Selkie's cotton styles have become my go-to and I own very little organza.  Cotton tends to lay flatter and because it's heavier, designers have to go easy on the ruffles.  Enter  The Unicorn Defends Romantic Dress.

When it comes to this print, I actually prefer the way the organza looks over the cotton version, but sadly none of the organza styles would looked nice on me, so I opted for this lovely romantic style which has a nice waist, long skirt and long sleeves.  Much like the puff sleeves on organza dresses, I love these sleeves on other people, but they're just not right for me.  Since this dress is made of cotton and since I have also made my own puff dresses from cotton several times, I decided to attempt to alter the sleeves to something a little less overwhelming.  

I recently purchased a Regency dress pattern, McCall's 8132 and decided to use this pattern to guide me instead of free-handing this little project so that I get the best and most symmetrical results.  I unfolded the labyrinthine pages and located the piece I needed only to find that it was much, much shorter than I wanted the sleeves to be.  So, I wadded it back up, shoved it into the package and went for plan B, which was just finding a dress with a sleeve length I liked, measuring, and then using that length to help me create the new sleeves.  The dress I used was my Love Letters Beach Day dress and the sleeves measured 14"/35.5cm.  I measured down 14"/35.5cm plus an extra inch/2.5cm for a seam allowance and then cut off the excess sleeves.

First I hemmed up the new sleeve, then I measured out a casing and elastic.  I tacked in the casing by hand then stitched it in with the machine.  After that I put in the elastic and stitched it closed.  Easy-peasy.  It took about an hour and a half to complete this task, mainly because I did a lot of measuring to make sure I was getting the right length and that both sleeves were even.

I left the long ruffle at the bottom like the long sleeves had because I like that detail.  And, although I do wish that I had made the sleeves a little longer, overall I am much happier with them being shorter, off my wrists and out of my way.

While I was making alterations, I did end up trimming off much of the drawstrings.  I'm never selling this dress and I just don't need that much string dragging the ground, so I tied knots in each string and then snipped them off about a centimeter below the knots.  They're still functional and no more dragging.

I know that many people cringe when they see/hear me talking about making such alterations to a dress and it always garners at least one dislike when I post alteration videos on YouTube, but I'm not exactly sure why.  Perhaps there are dress purists in the world who cannot stand to see the completed work altered in any way.  

While I too used to dislike the idea of buying a piece of clothing only to have to invest more time and energy working on it myself, I've come to see the value in having clothes that are uniquely tailored to my shape and my tastes.  Dress makers aren't mind readers, sometimes we have to make a few tweaks to get exactly what we're dreaming of.

And so, with just an hour and a half of investing my time and sewing skills, I now have a unique dress that I adore and am sure to wear much more often because of it.  I encourage you too that if you'd like to see a change, why not try it or find a professional who will.  It might not work out, but it might be everything you've wanted and more.

Shopping Info:  The Unicorn Defends Romantics Dress from Selkie and Ivory Sheep.