Shorten A Dress Without Hemming From The Bottom

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Shorten a dress from a connection point rather than from the bottom

The standard way of shorten the length of a dress is normally from the bottom. But sometimes that isn’t the best option, especially it there are add-ins to the skirt, like this one with a piece of lace connecting the farbic of the dress body to the checked ruffle.

For this dress the stitches attaching the lace must be carefully removed. An awl or a seamripper are the best tools for this job. Once the lace is removed, measure the amount to be taken off as shown in step three of the picture below.

shorten a dress from a mid section rather than from the bottom

After the extra fabric is cut off, reattach the lace and checked ruffle. (Note that the lace and checked ruffle stayed attached the whole time). So you should have only one top stitched seam to connect the two parts of the dress. Also recall that the lace was originally attahced using a zigzag stitch. This is because the fabric is a stretch. If you were to sew it with a straight stitch the stitches would break and your seam would fall apart.

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This is one of the many projects that I love using my Necchi sewing machine for. The stretch stitches are beautiful as long as I use a ball point needle when working with knits.

This picture above gives a before and after picture. One would hardly know that the dress was shortned except for the floral design that was slightly sacrificed right never the lace junction.

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Another example of shortening a dress from a point other than the bottom

Last prom season I also had a dress that needed to be shortned from a connection point. This dress had a high/low hem line with a ruffle. Only the back of the dress needed to be shortened. To shorten from the bottom of the dress would have compromised the ratio of the ruffle to the rest of the dress, so I did the alteration from the seam where the ruffle attaches.