Anyone remember the thrift haul video I did with my mom last Winter??  In that video I showed a Son de Flor dress I found but it was too big and needed to be taken in about 4 inches.  You can see that haul HERE (in the try on portion of the video I had a clip on the back of the dress making it look like it fit).  

Now eight months later I finally got around to resizing the dress and I love it!  I wanted to do it right (which is why I put it off so long).  I started by seam ripping the skirt portion from the bodice then unstitching the sides of the bodice to the underarm.  There is twill tape around the arm opening so I carefully unstitched that as well for a couple of inches on either side of the seam.  I put the bodice on inside out and got an idea for how much I needed to take it in.  Took it off and pinned where the stitching lines would be and tried it back on.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t take it in too much where I wouldn’t be able to get it on and off since there are no closures on the dress.

When I was happy with the fit I sewed the new side seams and tried it on again.  Then I trimmed down the seam allowance, opened it up, and resewed the twill tape in place.  I serged the bottom edge of the bodice and top edge of the skirt (it was serged together before and I had to remove that stitching the separate the dress).  All that was left was to gather the skirt to fit the smaller bodice size and sew them back together.  

For some reason I had expected the resize to be harder than it was (mostly getting the twill tape to look nice again).  

I finished the resize last night and wore it today with a thrifted shirt underneath to add a cute collar detail.  I love how effortless this dress is to wear because it’s still a little loose fitting and comfy, but can easily be dressed up with a couple of accessories.  

I’m so bad at making plans to alter an article of clothing then never actually doing it.  For some reason I find working on existing items intimidating and would rather make something else from scratch.  But since this went so well maybe it will motivate me to tackle some of my other alterations!  

 Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my dress resize! Until next time, Happy Sewing!

-Whitney-