How To Lengthen a Dress! | The Style Pile #8

There is a box, in the corner of my sewing room.

It is a box whose content have not seen the light of day for many a month.

Many crafters will be familiar with this box.

In all of its forms.

There's the ever growing amorphous lump that lies underneath your desk

the monster underneath your bed

The stuff you vacuumed packed in a fit of organization and stuffed into your garage

in the hopes that'd you never have to deal with it again

This my friends

is the unfinished sewing pile

The item that I'm grabbing out of the box today is actually a dress of my mums

that I recently took from my parents house

without my mum realizing

Now I know that this dress is too short for my mum

and because of that she is unable to wear it

so the plan is to fix it for her

and to make it longer as a Mother's Day present

So the first thing that I did was to grab the fabric

that I wanted to use to extend the dress.

I wanted to something to match the colour and the arm hole cuffs

So I found this really similar fabric

A black non stretchy linen of medium weight

To get the right amount of fabric for the bottom of the dress

I placed this linen below the dress like this

and then aligned up the top edge of the linen with the bottom of the dress

I folded over the linen like this

Now, I wanted to extend the dress by this amount

So, I drew a rectangle onto the folded linen like this

Now the length of the rectangle

is doubled the desired amount that I wanted to extend it by

plus one inch for the seam allowance

and the width is just the same as the dress plus an inch

for both seam allowance and a little extra just for insurance

So I cut out this rectange

cutting through both layers of fabric

and now I have a rectangle of linen that's this big

What I did next

was to fold this linen piece in half length wise like this

Then I gave it an iron

and then I sewed down both ends of the strip of fabric, like this

The stitching down this folded edge will make a kind of fake hem.

Now, if you're thinking "Annika, why did you bother with that extra long rectangle

if you were just going to fold it and make a fake hem?"

Well, there's two reason's for this

1 is that I wanted to make it just as thick, as the cuffs and the collar

which are also two layers

and 2 is that, I just hate hemming things

and if i can avoid it, I will

and I also think that this method looks a little bit more neat.

To sew I used a straight stitch and a thread in a matching colour

Then, once I'd done that

I folded the piece of material in half, this way

I matched up the folded edge with the side of the dress on the left side

and then I made an imaginary line extending down from the right side of the dress

and then I drew this line onto the black linen material

and then, I sewed down this line

through all four layers of material, again using a straight stitch

Now, I don't want the raw edges of this piece to fray once it's attached to the dress

so what I do next is going to stop them fraying

Now one method to stop fraying is to use a pair of scissors like this

called pinking shears

and cut off the excess fabric from the raw edges

You can also use a product like Fray Check on the edges

or if you have an overlocker like I do, you can go over the raw edges

whatever method you've used to prevent fraying, this bit can now be attached to the dress

so to attach it to the dress, I lay it down underneath the dress, inside out

so with that ugly seam visible, with the fake hem part at the top

and the fixed up raw edges at the bottom

and then I slip this on over the top of the dress, like this

and I match up the bottom of the dress with the bottom of the linen material

Next, I pin everything in place

and then I simply sew the linen material onto the dress

all the way around the hem, like this

I've also set my needle, slightly to the left of centre

so that I will sew past the old hem that was on the dress

Then, and this is always my favourite part

I unfold it and

TA-DA!

This is what it looks like

Now, at first I thought that my sewing was really wonky

because the houndstooth pattern didn't exactly align up nicely with the edge

but then

I realized that the houndstooth was already really wonky along hem

oh well, there's nothing I can really do about that

Anyway, this isn't a huge issue and you can't really tell that it's a bit wonky

unless your face is like right next to the hem of the dress

It looks like fine from back here

so I'm going to go wrap this up

and I'm going to give it to my mum for Mother's Day

So I've wrapped up the present...

in Christmas paper

and now I'm giving it to my mum

Wooh!! *giggles*

Happy Mother's Day mum!

Mum: Oh why thank you my darling daughter

Oh Ella, why are you so excited all of a sudden?

whoa

Ella! Why are you going crazy?

A: so excited mum

Mum: Oh!

Did you take this out of my wardrobe?

A: *giggles* yes

Mum: Ohh wow!

That's excellent

'cus it was a little bit short

so can I try it on?

A: yeah

Mum: Okay

A: Yes
Mum: I'll try it on

In fact, you have to

Mum: Okay
A: You have to try it on for the video

Anyway, mum really liked the dress

she just wasn't able to wear it as a dress before

and as you can see, that extra length has really made a difference

Happy Mother's Day mum!

I also hope that this video has been helpful

now you know what you need to do if you need to lengthen something that's too short

and..

Alright, okay

okay this video is done

Thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon

who helped to make this video possible

To become my Patreon supporter

go to patreon.com/annikavictoria