Alterations

Alyssa was asked to Homecoming and that means a dress . . . a nice formal, shorter dress, but not too short . . . modest and not amazingly expensive.

After looking on line at many options, I found a couple of dresses at the local thrift store. One was $8 and one was $5!! They were both too long and strapless, but alterable - with my minimal sewing skills I remember my mom teaching me. (I can sew a straight line really well and a couple of other things.)

After looking around at more options, to no avail, Alyssa chose the cream with black lace. 

Here is what we started with.

 A good friend, who is great seamstress, showed me a hemming trick to get that little rolled-over hem easily and smoothly. It worked wonderfully.

First I hemmed up the lining. 

Then the lace.

 (The blue dress in the picture is the other one I found at the thrift store.  I can't wait to alter that one - for a later date and with adjustments to the process I learned doing the black one. I'll do a similar wide shoulder strap again.)

Then I took some fabric and made a pattern for doing some wide shoulder straps and used the skirt material, I cut off, to make them.

 A little bit of gathering and deciding were to attach them.

And voila! . . . Well, not quite yet.

I did have to fix the hem a bit and I still need to tack in the sides of the straps in the back that are bulging out a bit . . .

but I'm so excited it turned out!!

 Look for Alyssa in the dress, for real, next week when I post pictures of Homecoming!