The Birthday Dress - Isn't She Adorable

I took Princess Five shopping for her fourteenth birthday. She found lots of clothes she liked but her favorite was this dress. She loved the way it fit and loved the style and colors. However, it was a little shorter than she liked and she asked me at the store if I thought I could make it longer. 

At the store, in the lights there, it looked like the trim was black. I told her I thought I had some lace or something we could use to fix it. I got home and got busy helping someone with something and she asked me if I could "fix" it for her to wear the next day for church. 

I thought it would be a quick fix. I went to my craft stuff and pulled out some black lace only to find out that the color of the dress trim is a really dark brown. 
 
That wasn't going to work so I pulled out some white lace hoping that could work and it wasn't going well. I had company so I had to take a break and get dinner and Princess needed to go babysitting so I prayed about what to do to help her as I wanted to support her in trying to be modest and comfortable in the dress and I knew she would be disappointed if she wasn't able to wear it the next day.

After praying about it, I called my sister who lives about ten minutes away. I drove over to her house with the dress and asked if she had anything I could use to lengthen it. Her daughter is the one getting married and her wedding colors have a peach in them so my sister just happened to have some peach organza. I took some other ribbons just in case and when I arrived home there were several options as to how to use the fabric. 
 
I thought about making a petticoat out of it and putting tulle inside the entire thing but that would use lots of the fabric that my sister still needed. Then I thought, I could make a petticoat out of some tulle I already had and just sew a strip of the fabric onto the bottom of the slip. I pinned it like that and the tulle made the dress poof like I wanted but the fabric at the bottom was too far under the dress when it needed to be at the bottom edge. So, I decided to just add the fabric to the bottom that was already there on the seam so that it wouldn't show when stitched on and then to make the "poof" that the dress needed, I quickly made a slip out of tulle. 

Basically, all I did for the slip was to make a big tube out of the tulle by folding it in half and sewing up one side and across the top and left about three inches on the top open to turn it right side out. Then, once it was turned around that way. I slipped elastic in which I had cut to the size of her waist. Once it was inside the big tube. I pinned one side and then pulled the elastic stretched out (inside the tulle) as I pinned the tulle to it first, at the half mark, and then, at the "1/4" point on the stretched out elastic. Then, I pulled the elastic out and zig-zagged the elastic inside the tulle. 

Doing it this way made all the seams of the itchy tulle on the inside so the bottom was a folded edge and the top edges were folded inside as well as the side seam. I told her if it was still itchy, she could just put on another slip under it. 

To add the extra two-three inches on the bottom of the dress, I just cut a strip twice as thick as I wanted it to be and folded it over and then pinned it to the seam where the bottom edging of the dress was already sewed on. 

As you can see, I zig-zagged that on as well as I didn't want the organza to fray in the wash. I sewed the side seam first and zig-zagged on that edge before turning it right sides out and pinning it to the bottom seam. I will mention that at first I had it pinned to the top side of the seam and it made the dress hang funny so I unpinned it and sewed it to the bottom side of the seam as you can see in the pictures.

I finished it late in the night as the company kept me busy for awhile. I wrote a card and pinned it to the dress and hung it up for Princess to see first thing in the morning of her birthday. She looked beautiful and got compliments throughout the day and actually got one this week from someone who noticed it and commented when we saw them later. 

I know that made her feel beautiful and special and I am grateful that I have the talent to be able to figure out how to do that. I am grateful that I can pray to my Heavenly Father about simple things and know He cares enough to give me guidance how to help figure out the things I am asking Him about. (See a post about that here.)I am grateful that I have a sister who is willing to share her fabric when no other place in town would have probably had that color and type of fabric that I needed and that late on a Saturday night. I am grateful that my Princess want to be modest and comfortable and still feel pretty and stylish. I am grateful that I have a working sewing machine (see about that here) and the list goes on and on. 

Just today, as I drove down the main street, I was giving gratitude for this and that thing. There are so many things that I am grateful for today especially. I am not sure why they were all so close to the surface but I give gratitude for that as well as I sometimes need reminders to give gratitude for all that I am blessed with.