Monday, February 3, 2014

Modifying a prom dress

In today's stores all the prom dresses are pretty much too short, too low cut, too figure fitting and just plain tawdry. For girls that want to be modest for their prom, look stylish and still keep their dignity, you pretty much have to sew from scratch or modify the dress.  In our church we have very strict modesty rules for dress.  This girl came to me and asked me to modify her dress.  She is pretty short so I cut off 3.5" of the hem, did a new rolled hem on the lining and the stretch chiffon and then pieced the old hem pieces together to form sleeves of a sort.  As you can see from her darling smile, she is very pleased with how it turned out! It only took about 2 hours to cut and re-hem the dress, but then about 3 more or so, to turn those pieces into straps, and hand sew them on.  There are several things in life I am pretty good on, but estimating time is NOT one of them.  Even with client appointments, although I have been in public accounting for 15 years, I really have a difficult time estimating how long something will take.  She offered to pay for the alterations, but I seriously have no idea how much is even fair, besides that it is a good service I can help offer, and that smile is payment enough!