Once in awhile my quilting is interrupted with a call to do alterations. It is a nice change and often a challenge to do. This job was to shorten a mother of the bride dress, alter the bodice/straps/side seams and shorten the length of two of the most beautiful gowns to be worn by bridal party attendants.
The mother of the bride dress simply needed the outer skirt shortened. Sounds pretty straight forward, however this is not your normal outer skirt. It is a beautiful, feminine swag style, lower in the back, swooping up on the sides to meet at the waistline left side seam. Did I mention the extended bottom of the outer skirt giving it a slight ruffled appearance? It was obvious the best way to approach this task was to remove the skirt from the bodice and shorten from the top. After much marking and photographing, I went to work with my seam ripper to release the outer skirt. This process left outer and under skirts detached from the bodice with even more stitch ripping to separate the two skirts. Outer skirt free, I measured and removed 3 5/8″ of outer skirt fabric from the top. Then all I had to do was work backwards to put it all back like I had taken it apart. It now looks unaltered, but the lady will be able to enjoy the wedding with a dress not dragging the ground behind her.
For fun and being a person who doesn’t like to waste fabric, I took the fabric scraps from cutting and made two very pretty flower pins as a surprise for the client. They would add a nice touch to the cross-over bodice where the wrapped skirt and bodice meet. They could also be clipped to the shoes she will be wearing, attached to a purse, or an adornment in the hair. I do hope she enjoys using them for the wedding and even with everyday wear.
This weekend I will do the needed alterations to the long gowns. Once finished, I will post again with photos.