Amend: Pink Dress Waistband

I bought this dress from TK Maxx about four years ago, but haven't really worn it the last few. It had an empire line under the bust, which got a bit cake-layer-like in recent years.

 

I merrily unpicked the top and bottom, with the idea of putting a cream/white waistband in the middle. That was before I realised that each piece was actually gathered and elasticated, meaning suddenly the dress was HUGE and it wasn't going to be the simple job of just putting a straight waistband in.

 

 

 I cut out two strips of cream fabric, doubled-up to stop it going see-through. I felt that using just one strip of fabric, with a seam at the back, would make it very challenging to fit the piece between top and bottom. With two strips, I could adjust each side-seam to make it fit snuggly.

 

 

Normally I'm a pin-it-and-hope kinda girl, going straight from pins to sewing machine without bothering to tack it in place. But with the stretchy, slippery, multi-layered nature of this dress, I thought tacking would probably be recommended!

 

 

Tacking involves using running stitch and a contrasting thread to hold pieces together before you commit them to the sewing machine. It's better than pins because it holds the whole seam in place, but time-consuming to do. That said, combined with some CSI, this seemed to go in very quickly!

 

 



Once the first half was attached, I repeated the process for the bottom half. This gave me the desired waistband, but it was a lot wider than I needed or wanted it to be.

So I repeated a method used on another pink dress I wrote about. Clearly I have numerous badly fitting pink dresses - but not any more! I used shirring elastic to give the waistband some stretchy flexibility and to improve the fit.

 

I really LOVE the final results of this dress! The shirred waistband gives me back my waist, holds the dress nicely in place and the added length makes the dress a more manageable length.

 

Success, and another dress added back into the summer wardrobe!