Follow My New Blog

I've started a new blog. Follow my crafting adventures on creativeirony.com.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Share-A-Craft: Totally Free Prom Dress Makeover

Share-A-Craft is just as much fun as a tilt-a-whirl, but with less stomach upset and possible vomiting. Every Monday, I post a project of any type that I've recently or not so recently done. We'd love to see what you've been making too. Send me an email with your name and a link to your project at karah99 @ gmail.com and you might end up featured.  

A few weekends ago, my aunt Angie and her family came down to visit. You might remember her from my cruise post--she organized the whole cruise and is generally just a fun-loving, energetic person, the perfect person to have around for some fun. We had pretty much laughed the entire time, and we fixed fondue, played Guesstures, watched movies and generally had a great time.

My cousin, Sadie, is 15 and she got asked to the prom. On their way down to our house, they picked up a previously owned prom dress that was just stunning. The only thing was, Sadie is 5'10" (we grow them tall in our family, my little sister, Melissa, excluded) and the girl she bought the dress from was 5'2" (coincidentally, the same height as my sister). This left the dress way too short and at an awkward length.


This is the before shot:

They asked me to help them make over the dress. We thought about putting on a ruffle, and that probably would have cost money and might have ended up looking tacked on. After a little thinking and brainstorming, we decided to ruche up the sides.

After gathering the sides, the dress was still too poofy and it didn't really shorten the dress much at all. I've never tried ruching before, so this was a learning experience. We decided to do some more gathering and making scallops around the bottom. After a little fussing, a lot of hand sewing and a little machine sewing and hemming around the underskirt (petticoat-type stuff, whatever it's called), we had the hem done.

She also wanted to beef up the straps some more and the dress had come with a little scarf thing, so a little more gathering and some hand sewing, and we had this:

It's so beautiful on her, so current, yet a bit more princessy, and totally original.

The best part, the make over part was completely free!

Sharing Here:
I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

8 comments:

  1. This is amazing. I really love the straps!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Soo cute!! What an improvement!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice dress, I really like how the red flakes are compiled into one side and then scattered a bit at the far end. Nice style.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a great makeover - hope she enjoys it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. it's beautiful! So much better than it was!

    ReplyDelete
  6. No way - that's amazing! Well done, it's so pretty! :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wow! Fantastic transformation! I bet she was sooo proud to have a cousin like you! :D

    ReplyDelete
  8. This is fantastic! It was a cute dress to begin with, but the pick-ups really make it so "right now"! Great work!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by! I love your comments and look forward to hearing from you.