Altering a Red 1940s Nylon Plisse Dress

Yesterday I accomplished one of the hardest alterations I've done in a while. I bought this 1940s nylon plisse dress online against my better judgement. I was swayed by red and sparkly buttons.

I much prefer to be able to try things on because even if you have all of the measurements, things don't always fit as well as you'd look. In this case, the waist fit but the shoulders were much too big (16" v. the 13.5-14" I needed) and this made the entire top half of the dress puff out like I was wearing a sack.

It took an entire day. I unpicked the sleeves and side seams to the waist and calculated how much I needed to take the shoulders in. I traced the edges of the sleeves onto paper to make a template for the armhole shape. I used the template to take the top half in by 3.4cm from each side. I pinned the sleeves in place to determine how much I needed to take in the upper waist. After taking in the upper waist (including repositioning the top half of the zip), I matched these seam joins with those of the sleeves and sewed the sleeves in.

As the original thread was disintegrating, I went over all of the seams with running stitch and then zigzagged the raw edges. As the original buttons were losing rhinestones and pinned, I added snap fastenings and sewed new sparkly buttons over these.

I'm much happier with the dress now.

 

Vintage buttons - B2B Vintage Fair

Original buttons. Photo from denisebrain's Etsy

 

 

 

I also went over all of the inside seams as the thread was disintegrating.

I then zigzagged all of the raw edges.

I machine darned a small hole in the skirt.

I used the fabric cut from the shoulders/arm holes to mend the hole.