Back in November, my mother came to visit and brought some of our old prom dresses for my sister to rent/sell. My mom brought with her this old totally 90’s green dress. Underneath the lacy collar frill, I could tell this dress had potential. Just look at the fabric! So stunning. So I took it home and now I have finally gotten around to it and finished it! But boy did I learn a lot from this project. It turned into a much larger project than I thought! Here is a break down of everything I did:

• First, I cut out the itchy tulle underneath the dress.
• I picked off the lacy collar craziness to see what laid beneath. The lace laid on a big rectangle of fabric that covered the shoulders. It would have been perfect if I wanted an off-the-shoulder type of look but I wanted to cover my shoulders. So I needed to make whole new sleeves!

• The hardest part was making the new sleeves from scratch. I had to make sleeves that would cover not just my arms but my shoulders too. I am a newbie sewer with not very much experience so I improvised. I used tracing paper and had help tracing it around where I wanted it go to see how to cut it out flat. I cut the bottom of the dress and luckily it was just enough to use for the sleeves.
• As I pinned the sleeves and sewed them on I tried it on a dozen times to make sure it would work. I ended up using elastic around the shoulder because my fabric was too loose. The dress has a lining on the inside so I could easily slip the sleeve between the lining and the dress fabric so I cheated and just sewed right on top of everything. I just wanted to finish and luckily my thread hid well.

• The zipper connected to the top fabric so now it was too high for the dress. I had to unpick the whole zipper and move it down an inch.
• I hemmed the bottom and cut off any awry threads and then I was done!

It was a fun project and I was probably a little too lazy and too quick on some parts but I am pretty proud of what I was able to accomplish.