Prom Dress 2013

Last week my daughter, Beth, asked me if I could shorten a prom dress for my grandson's girlfriend. Sounded simple enough, so, of course, I said I would. After all, I've sewn for years even making flower girls dresses, bridesmaids dresses, and altering a couple of wedding gowns.

Never assume!  The dress had a lined underskirt and two layers of organza with a specialty hem.  Not quite what I was expecting.  The underskirt didn't phase me, but those two layers of organza -- whoa!

After inspecting the hem, I determined that there was nylon cord inside the rolled serged edges.  I'd never done that before, but I DO love a challenge!

The only way to achieve that flirty skirt was to enclose the nylon cord as I shortened the dress, it just wouldn't have looked right laying limp at the bottom of the skirt.

My serger is OLD, I mean really OLD!  Since it is usually just used to finish seams and not to sew garments, I just never replaced it.  It does, however, with a couple of adjustments do a very nice rolled serged edge.  The issue with a serger is there is a blade to cut the edge.  The trick was to get the nylon cord inserted close to the edge without managing to cut it!

 

Just to the right of the presser foot is the blade, so the cord had to be held very carefully in order to serge over it without cutting it.  To be honest, I did cut it once, but was able to get the cord lined up so there was not a break in the hem.

 

Did I mention that each of those layers was 170 inches around the bottom?  That was a lot of concentrated serging, but the above is the result.

 

Isn't the back pretty?

 

 

And here is the lovely girlfriend, Miranda.  She absolutely did not want her face to show in this photo because she had not "done" her makeup.  But, she struck such a cute pose, I could not resist including the whole photo instead of cropping it so that just the dress would be seen.

 

Don't you just love a happy ending?  Colton will escort this beauty to the prom this coming weekend and they will dance the night away!

 

The End!

 

Until next time!

 

 

xoxoXOXOxoxo

 

Lois