remake of mom's dress

 My youngest sister in law got married today.  She has the kindest soul she  is who took care of my mother in law while she was dieing.  She is very dear to me.  My middle daughter wanted to wear something special to the wedding as did I .  So I made the  dress you see in these first photos for her to wear and I wore one of my mother in laws vintage dresses from the early to late 60's.

This dress in these pictures is a re-make of one that my mother in law wore as a teen ager.  You can see from the original post about that dress it had lots of age damage.

My daughter did wear the original once to a sadies dance.  But we could tell that it should never be worn again which was heart breaking to us.  It is a dress for good memories of that dance and mom now.  The original was brown and green the new version is brown and hot pink.

The fabric for this dress I used two sheer curtains and 1 ink satin sheet I found thrift shopping.  No one I think could tell that without me telling them first.  In fact most people where surprised when I told them that.  The back of the dress has 6 hand covered buttons and the front 4.  It is also boned in the bodice.  I used the original hem of the curtain as the hem of the skirt.  The header of the curtain I made some hair decorations out of but my daughter had already removed them from her hair when I took these photos.

The belt she is wearing is a vintage 1980's belt but it matched well.

The below pictures are of the dress when it was under construction.  You can see the flowers I was talking about in these photos that I used in the hair.  At the time I was debating on using them on the dress.  So they where pined on to see what they looked like.

I lengthened this version of the dress as my daughter wanted it a little longer.  If I make it again I will lengthen the torso as well to make it a few inches longer so the waist I feel more correct for her height.   My mother in law a was a petite woman in height.
We also added a little extra room in the over bodice to make it easier to lift the arms. The straps on the under bodice I also doubled in width to give them a little more strength.

These two photos the one above and the one to the left show off the color better.  These photos where taken one day after work at the costume shop when I stayed late to work on this dress and a few other co works and boss stayed late to work on a play we were doing.

 The picture below is from the one time my daughter wore the original dress for the first and last time.

Prom beadwork and refashioned dress

My daughters went to prom last month and I never showed the bead-work I did for them or should I say that we all did for it.

My oldest daughter wore a grayish blueish dress found thrift shopping brand new with tags on it for ($20.00) which I left as I found it.

So her pieces are one boutonnière and one hair piece both had shades of blue in them.

The young man she went with loves soccer so we added a soccer ball to his item. Which you can see to the left in the left photo.  I made the flower my oldest daughter made the leaves.

For the hair piece my oldest daughter yet again made the leaves with silver lined bugle beads and I did the rest of it.  I like that we can now work on projects like this together.

My middle wore a dress I found thrift shopping ($15.00)that was all green.  I decided to add hot pink embellishments to it.  So a pink sash got added as did pink flower sequins with a white faux pearl bead in the middle of each flower.  I also added a hot pink jacket to make it more modest and she wore a mod bod in a neutral skin color to also make it more modest as the original dress was strapless.

 

I also added double sided satin ribbon shoulder straps to make the dress have more support as dancing can make dresses drop and I did not want her to fight her dress all night.  Below there are still pins holding the sequins on.

 

This daughter had a hairpiece, and a corsage.  She went stag as she was too young to have a date but she met up with friends at the dance to hang out with so she had people to dance with that were also too young to have dates.


Corsage on the left hairpiece on the right in the photo below.     My middle daughter did the leaf work I made the flowers.

My middle daughter made the necklace you see in this post originally it was for her older sister but she ended up giving it to another girl in the group.

Valance to folk shirt how to

So as I said yesterday in the update my middle daughter got excited to go through my thrift shop stash of fabric.  I like to buy curtains and such that have pretty details to use as accents on costumes.  She found this single valance that was 14 inches by 56 inches.  Since there is a dance tonight with a red white and pink theme Valentine's I would guess yep you can guess it she wanted it made.  I told her she wanted a shirt she had to help dismantle in this case we are dismantling more than we did for the other one as it is going to need the seem allowances in the valance for the length and width of the shirt.

Warning this post is photo heavy

After ripping out all the seams and cutting it in half she now has two pieces of fabric that are 20 by 29.5 inches.  As you can see a lot of fabric in the seams to make the curtain rod slot and hem.  She gained 6 inches for the length of her blouse.  We could have cut nice little angles  for the arms in the fabric you are welcome too but I like having the extra fabric in there to make it more billowy.

Because I have some ( a tiny bit) of red 100% cotton vintage lace I decided to add that to the two pieces of the valance to make it even a little longer I pinned then surged in place thus finishing the raw edges and makes for a nice seem to flip to the back that I can top stitch over to hold down.



This is where we have to change a lot from the other item as this is only truly enough fabric the front and back of the blouse (for teen/adult size for a baby/toddler I would have cut differently and would have had enough to make a summer dress.  The joys of children growing up the things you learn you can use at one point and not another.

Wish we had found two valances but we didn't.  So we had to find something else for the sleeves

I was trying to keep the flower look of the valance embroidery when I picked the lace with flower details same is true for the fabric for the sleeves. I picked red and white fabric with flower details.

I cut a slip 11.5 inches wide by the width of the fabric 44 inches.  Then on the length I  sewed more lace.  Then cut the whole thing in half so I have two pieces that are 11 by 22  I did not worry about removing the salvage as I know it will get cut off when I serge that seam but you are welcome to cut it off.

Pin in place on the front and back of the blouse sew 8 inches down leaving the ends open see photos.  Then sew up side seams making sure to match up lace edges under arm point and lace edges again.

I had a tiny bit of lace left about 3 inches shorter than the width of the neck but since the item is going to be gathered any way.  I just pinned it so that the fabric and the lace where each divided into four equal sections.

 

Then when sewing held the lace firm so that the feed dogs could pull in the excess fabric and make them fit together.

 
Next I cut two pieces of elastic 11 inches long the diameter of my bicep did the same to the sleeve as I did the lace.  Divided both sleeves and elastic into four equal parts and pined in place.  Then when sewing used feed dogs to pull in and stretched the elastic to make it all fit and gather nicely.

I went back to the neck area  folded over 3/4 of an inch of fabric an made a casing sewed it and laced in 24 inches of small elastic sewed ends together and shut opening.

 

I put it on my dress form and decided  I wanted am empire waist so I sewed twill tape under the bust to make a casing and added elastic.   I like it much better that way.  Still not fond of the back yet but I am all finished or so I thought.

After my daughter tried it on she decided she wanted the back pleated I said I was done with it and she would have to do that her self.  So she placed it on the dress form and went to work changing the back to something she liked more.

Overall she likes the hang of the purple one more but the details on the red and white one the best.  I have not taken a photo of the new back pleats she added.  When she is done ironing it I will post that too as an

update to this post.
Here are the other photos of what my daughter did to the back of the blouse.  My littlest daughter wanted this shirt too.  Since my middle daughter already had the purple one after she added her mods to it she gave it to her younger sister such nice kids to share.