Why is there so much bloody elastic in this dress??
Elastic under the bust, elastic on the sleeves and even elastic around the hemline!
Much better, I can once again breathe and the circulation has returned to my arms!
Here’s my easy no sew quick fix that quickly upsized that adorable dress:
I flipped the dress inside out and grabbed my seam ripper
then oh so carefully removed that tight under bust elastic (this dress was obviously created for someone with a much less generous chest than mine)
and opened the sleeve seams a bit and pulled out that weird cuff elastic
then hand stitched the sleeve hems closed again.
Awesome! The simple act of removing that elastic increased the dress by at least a full size!
*I left the elastic around the hemline as it gives the dress a bit of a poofy skirt.
Continue your passion for refashion with my Confessions of a Refashionista e-book series:
These changes can make such a difference to fit. Recently (probably since gaining weight and getting older!) I find I get really annoyed by tight or restrictive sleeves. I laugh at myself as I used to think ‘What?!’ when my mother complained about the same thing! I saved one great dress by following your advice from a while ago, and taking the sleeves off altogether (used binding for armholes). Without the sleeves it just gave that bit more movement across the back and it magically fit again!
It’s amazing how something as simple as removing sleeves can really loosen up a garment! 😀
Have you read “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris? I think you’d enjoy it. (There’s also a movie starring Johnny Depp.)
Oh Meg…if only I could use the sweetness of creatively created chocolate to magically transform the local attitudes & xenophobic society I experience every day but alas life is not a lovely written work of fiction and I am not Vianne Roche (or Juliette Binoche 😉 )
Ah, well…next time you get the stinky eye, remember that you’re an internet rock star with a devoted following, and sweetly smile secretly to yourself!
That is constantly in the back of my mind and really does help get me through the isolation here 🙂 , I just wish I had some of that fabulous online lurv and support during my day to day life “in person”…
I love the cute pattern on this dress. I have once gotten rid of a similar style dress for the reason you have refashioned yours. I wish I would have thought to have done what you did because I loved the fabric of the dress but I never felt comfortable wearing it.
Also I love that you live in Berlin. My Partner is from Berlin and I have never been there! It sounds so amazing and I would take a near empty suitcase and leave the kids to get to know their omi and opi (spelling?) so I could explore 😉 I’m from NZ so it’s a long way to go.
I grabbed that dress strictly because of the quirky black cat pattern not realizing the elastic was so tight until I got it home – thankfully it was a super easy fix to upsize, I think it will look great layered under sweaters in the colder weather too!
*My personal experience living in Berlin has been as far from “amazing” as you can get. Your opinion of Berlin really depends on your situation & location. Living in a predominantly foreign (or at least accepting of foreigners) area where your native language or “accented” German may be accepted & easily understood makes a massive difference to your experience of the city & the locals.
In the 7 years I have lived here I have moved 3 times, each move taking me further East. I can honestly say, without a shadow of a doubt that although not at all the friendliest people on the planet, West Berliners are absolutely more pleasant than those in the East – and by East I mean the areas past the cultural & language melting pots of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg & Prenzlauer Berg.
I look like a stereotypical German (but with an always pleasant expression) – I speak German – I married a German – my child was born here so is also German…I am polite & pleasant yet, in the 7 years I have been living in Berlin I have been treated rudely on a near daily basis: everything from the typical German evil eye staring and heavy sigh & eye roll for no apparent reason to being shoved with shopping carts while waiting in line at the supermarket because I didn’t move into the 1cm of ’empty’ space in front of me to being told “foreigner go home” because I was speaking English to my child at the park & oh so much worse. I’ve accepted the fact that living in Berlin means dealing with this crap every day. It saddens me that rudeness/coldness & xenophobia seem to be an integral part of German culture and it is absolutely awful when it is directed at my young child.
I have lived in major cities in N. America, Japan, Greece & England and during my experiences as a ‘world-liver’ I was never treated horribly for being a “foreigner” or “different” until I came here. Sadly German culture is sorely lacking in the common human decency & general politeness that is found in the bulk of civilized societies throughout the world. It seems that Berliners have never been taught that simple golden rule: Treat others as you wish to be treated – or an even easier version: You catch more flies with sugar than sh*t.