I recently bought a small army of £15-and-under from Dorothy Perkins, with the idea of keeping just two of them. I love colour, so had quite a range of dresses, one of which was in acid yellow... So... Not a colour I'd usually pick out... But there was something about the dress that caught my eye.
The straps were unfortunately a little too long, but I liked the dress enough that I decided to shorten them. I unpicked what I though would be maybe two lines of stitching holding them in place... This turned out to be more like FIVE! Needless to say, I had to be very precise with the unpicker.
After working out how much needed to come off each side, I chopped the excess fabric and overlocked the raw edges. I then slipped the straps back inside the fabric envelopes and stitched them into place, first by hand and then with the sewing machine.
The top of the zip seemed to want to come down by itself, so when I just happened to find some yellow elastic lurking in my sewing box, I added a quick button and loop for some security.
I also had to do a bit of a fix on the beaded waistband, where some of the pewter-coloured beads were looking a bit loose. This was tricky, as I was trying to pull tight the original threads, which weren't very long and didn't give me much to play with.
I had the idea of wearing this dress to my friend, Jen's, hen-do - however, then I found out it was 1920s themed. Turns out, they didn't really wear that much acid yellow polyester in the 1920s... But they did wear lots of fringing! And I just happen to have leftover from a previous prohibition-era party! Of course.
I machined some fringing to the neckline and hand-stitched some around the bottom.
And to finish off the 1920s theme, I cut those annoying coat-hanger ribbons off each side, plaited them with a black ribbon and added some elastic to the back, to make a headband!
It was a really fun hen-do and everyone pulled out all the stops to form a troupe of fantastic flapper-girls. Happy Hen-Do, Mrs Shepherd-To-Be!
