Poofy Dress Week #3-Adding Sleeves

 Hello Readers. I am into the loose poofy dresses that are popular right now. They are fun and so  comfortable because there is no tight waistband! I love it. Today's post is poofy dress 2 and I found it at a thrift store. The color reminded me of Barbie, who I love. But I didn't love the straps, I kind of wanted sleeves. Big sleeves.

Before and after.

This dress was great but it was too long for me. Or I was too short for it. Either way, we need to fix this. I couldn't make that lower tier shorter. It would look weird if the bottom tier was half the length of the others. It had to be fully removed. That was fine because I had an idea about what to do with that extra fabric. 

I removed so may stitches. My seam ripper got a work out. This took a while but I wanted the edges intact. I couldn't cut it off, that would mess up the length of the tier above it.

I was working on this for quite a while. I had second thoughts but I kept going. When I make a decision, I follow through. Even if it is much more tedious than I thought it would be. I don't know if this is a strength, it is just what I do. 

 

I did cut the straps off the back of the dress. 

 

I pulled the straps from the front over the shoulders and sewed them in place in the back where the back straps used to be. These are the beginnings of my sleeves.

 

I cut the tier in half and used one half for one sleeve and one half for the other. I draped the fabric over the shoulder strap. I pinned it to the strap. The fabric had a pretty ruffled edge that I used at the shoulder. It matches the little ruffled edge at the neckline and looks great.

 

I pinned the sleeve all around the strap and then to the dress, under the arm. I had more fabric than I needed so I cut off some of the extra fabric. Everyone's arm size is different, so the measurement around the arm and over the shoulder will differ. The sleeve is still nice and poofy.

 

I sewed the sleeve to the strap and connected the sleeve together under the arm. 

 

It looked kind of like this. I liked the square neckline but I thought the sleeves needed a little more something.

 

I decided to add narrow elastic around the sleeves, about 2-3 inches from the ends of the sleeves to make a nice puffy sleeve. 

 

Sleeve close-up! 

 

 I was loving these sleeves and I was ready for a Barbie Re-watch party. Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself.

 

***Year End Update***- This dress is so fun. I wore it a lot until cold weather hit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poofy Dress Week #2

 Do you like big poofy dresses? They are all over my Instagram feed and I love them. This yellow dress was such a pretty eyelet lace, I loved the cotton fabric and it had a cotton lining. No nylon anywhere?? Thank goodness. I hate nylon. But these little spaghetti straps were not  great for me. 

Before and after.

I loved almost everything about this dress, except the straps. How do people where a bra with these little straps. My bra straps are not narrow like this. And strapless bras are not always comfortable. But I had an idea. Let's add sleeves. 

I removed the bottom tier off and saved it for sleeves. Stay with me though, I am going to put it back on the dress later.

I pinned the fabric from the bottom of the dress to the shoulder sleeves to make sleeves. But I didn't use all the fabric, only about 1/2. I sewed the sleeves to the straps so my shoulders and bra straps would be covered. 

The sleeve is attached on the strap on top of my shoulder and on the dress under my arm. 

If you look closely, you can see how much less full/gathered the lowest tier of the dress is after I took  off the lowest tier to make sleeves, and put what was left back on the dress. I don't mind it being less gathered. It still looks full and I love having sleeves. Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself.

***Year End Update***- I really liked this dress more with sleeves. I wore it often in summer.

Adding Sleeves on a Dress for Dressember

 Hello Readers. I have been refashioning and wearing dresses all month in honor of Dressember. The idea is to wear dresses all month to raise awareness and money to help fund their work to fight human trafficking. Any gift can help, just $150 can fund a move to relocate a family that needs to start their lives again in a safe location. Go to Dressember.org to learn more about how you can help and how to give.

Let's talk about refashioning a dress for this special time of year. This dress was actually fine. It just didn't have sleeves. And it's cold out there. I could just add a sweater on top but I wanted to do something fun for Christmas. 

 

Before and after.

 

I found this Santa fabric at a thrift store and it was SO cute. There was not much of it and it was cut all around the edges. I had to really thing about what to do with it. 

 

Just look at these Santas!!

I cut off all the fringe. They tried to make a tie blanket and gave up, I think. My piece of fabric was getting smaller after cutting off all the fringe.

I cut what was left into 4 squares that were all the same size. I matched them up and put them together with the right sides facing each other and I made sure all the Santas were right side up. I am making sleeves without a pattern but I knew that I didn't want any Santa upside down. 

I cut a triangular piece off the squares. I want my sleeves to look good and sleeves are usually shorter under the arm. Trust me. It's going to be great.

Here are my 2 sleeves. I sewed them together with the right sides facing each other and then turned them right side out. 

I folded the straight end of my sleeve in and sewed a casing. I want to add elastic to the ends of my sleeves to gather the sleeves into a poof.

I threaded narrow elastic through the casing. It was a short piece of elastic compared to the sleeve so I accidentally pulled the elastic all the way through and had to start over. 

I held the end in my teeth like an animal to prevent it from happening again. When it was all the way through I tied the ends of the elastic into a knot and sewed the casing closed. 

I sewed the sleeves into the arm holes of the dress. The sleeves were really big compared to the arm hole and that gave me lots of gathered fabric and made really poofy sleeves. That is what I wanted. 

I really liked my new sleeves. I didn't alter the dress at all. I just added the Santa sleeves. 

 

Thank you for reading along and happy Holidays to all of you!

 

***Year End Update- This was fun and still a little dressed up. Perfect for Christmas.