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.

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

Today's Dress: Blue Pansies

This dress isn't a vintage dress but handmade in a vintage inspired style. While it has the wide skirt hem similar to that of 1950s dresses, the print, waistband width, bust-waist ratio, bust dart placement, type of thread used and long central back zip are all modern.

It had some major issues when I bought it, including a tacked in pale blue open ended zip, uneven gathering where the straps attached to the front of the dress and a multitude of loose threads. I needed to shorten the straps for my short torso anyway so tidied this up by cutting off the existing gathers. Before sewing in an invisible zip in matching mid-blue, I tidied up the lining and secured it in place. I also took the dress in by a few inches at the waist. I decided against breaking the print by adding front darts and so there is a little gaping at the neckline. To counter this I always wear the dress with a top underneath or cardigan, making it a cheerful dress for autumn-ish days.

1950s/1960s Style Dress - Flamingo Vintage

Lipstick - Besame Red Velvet 1946

Earrings - Boots

Necklace - charity shop

Cardigan - Zara via charity shop

Shoes - Clarks

 

Photo from streetstylesnaps.com

I last wore this dress back in November when I was first photographed for The Street Style Carousel.

Today's Dress: Newspapers

You can read about how I fixed this dress here. I went back to St Cyr Vintage today and straight into a discussion of how to fix a holey Horrockes dress with the shop assistant...These photos were taken at 6am hence the tired look.

1950s Dress - St Cyr Vintage

1950s Glass Bead Necklace - charity shop

Earrings - M&S

Cardigan - Primark via charity shop

Shoes - Gabor via charity shop

Today's Dress: Harlequin

Look! A new dress! I bought this late 1940s/early 1950s dress on eBay. It was a bit of a gamble because I knew there were several stains on the front of the dress and on the front of matching bolero. The underarms also had unattractive yellowish marks. Since I had a £15 eBay voucher, I decided to bid for it and try to remove the stains. If it didn't work, I could always sew black grosgrain ribbon or rows of black ric rac around the arm holes to cover the yellowing and add black ric ric flowers to cover the stains on the front of the dress and the bolero like I did here.

It didn't come to that though. I soaked it some of that Vanish gel oxyclean stuff for two hours and the stains were almost completely faded. I rinsed out the dress and let it dry completely to check for fading before tackling the stain areas individually. With some gentle scrubbing, the faded marks came out completely. The black has faded slightly in the process but because the white is so bright now, the contrast remains and so it's not noticeable.

Early 1950s Dress - Advantage in Vintage on eBay

Bakelite Duck Brooch - Blighty Bazaar, Lipstick - Besame Red Velvet 1946

1950s Earrings - charity shop, Glass bead necklace - charity shop

Silk scarf - charity shop, 1950s hairgrip - B2B Vintage Fair

Bolero - TkMaxx

Bakelite bangles - charity shop

Shoes - Next via charity shop

Today's Dress: White

1940s Dress - Gingermegs Vintage

Sunglasses - Boots

1950s Earrings - charity shop

Belt - Kew via charity shop

Sandals - Clarks

Here's a photo from last summer.