Fixing a 1940s Strawberry Print Dress

I bought this 1940s strawberry print dress from Gingermegs Vintage two years ago. It fits again now and as I'd been unsuccessful at selling it on eBay while it was too small, I decided to see what I could do to it to make me like it again. The main issue - and probably why it didn't sell - was there were several conspicious areas where the fabric needed mending. These had only come about after I washed the dress for the first time.

After this I machine darned the fabric but as you can see from the photos it looked really ugly, particularly the area on the front of the dress by the left shoulder.

I unpicked the machine stitching yesterday and redarned it by hand. The areas still looked conspicious because of the amount of stitches needed to repair the fabric. I decided to add ric rac flowers to cover the darned areas. To add strength to the fabric, these are backed in yellow cotton. I wanted orange ricrac flowers the same shade of orange as the strawberries and matching red beads.

Unfortunately, my local fabric market only had ricrac in bright orange, tomato red and green. The orange and the red were much too bright for the dress. I decided on the green as the closest shade. I sewed on a greater density of red seed beads to counteract the brighness of the green.

The overall effect isn't perfect as the green flowers still stand out a bit too much but I can counteract this by wearing the dress with an orange cardigan. It's definitely better than having a dress which feels too shabby to wear and that I'm unable to sell.

Before

Before - Hem area

Before - Area at the top of the dress below the right shoulder

Before - Area at the top of the dress below the left shoulder

Before - Darning on the right shoulder

After

After - Area at the top of the dress below the left shoulder

After - Area at the top of the dress below the right shoulder

After - Left side of the dress skirt

After