Dress Resizing

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There's a clothing store outlet near my office that I love. Its a bit of a hunt, and hit or miss on what is there, but dresses are usually $12 or less.  Often they have dresses in XS and XL, but I don't wear either of those sizes.  For a dress that is just a few dollars, I'm willing to tailor it to make it fit.  In this case, I bought the XL dress for $8.  I looked at the construction of the dress--no pockets, no side zippers, no darts etc..., which meant it wasn't too hard to fix. 

First, I put the dress on my dress form (a luxury for sure, but it makes sewing for  myself so much easier) inside out and pinned it where I needed to take it in.  If you don't have a dress form, just put it on and pin it and take it off. 


Once you know how many inches you will be taking off each side, cut off the sleeves.  Yup, you need to cut the sleeves off because you will be taking the same number of inches of the armhole opening that you do off the sides.  I had determined that I would be taking 2" off each side seam.  I measured 2" in from the seam and marked it, then ran it under my serger (you can also just use a sewing machine).  I sewed from the bottom hem all the way through the arm pit. 


Next, you have to reduce the size of the sleeve.  Since I took 2" off the armhole, you need to take 2" off the sleeve, except that to do that, you just measure the bottom seam in 1" (because you are taking in 1" off of each side of the seam--which will add up to 2"). 

Now that the sides and sleeves are all sewn, you have to reset the sleeves of the dress.  Flip the dress inside out and leave the sleeves right side out and slide them inside and pin all the way around and sew back on. 

The neck opening is a bit wider than I might prefer, but not enough to warrant messing with it. 

An hour later, I've got a dress that fits me!  This is not a procedure that works if there are complicated seams, pockets or zippers along the side seams.