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Have you ever wanted to alter a formal gown?

This one came to me from a bad tailoring experience and was in desperate need of correcting. The client had called begging me to see what I could do to fix the situation but I was not prepared for what I found. I just though that common sense would tell you not to do what this seamstress did to this dress. When doing a new project that you have never done before I always go by the rule of thumb to take it apart the way it was constructed and to put it back together the same way. This will give optimal results when altering. 

This is the shoulder seam facing up and as you can see there are a few problems with it. Because of the sheer sleeve that falls over the shoulder this method certainly would have been the easiest, because the sleeve and the shoulder seam could be sewn in one straight line. It appeared that after this seam was made the extra allowance was simply cut off and the seam allowance sloppily tacked down by hand.

As you can see from the picture above doing the alteration this way makes the sleeve pucker and also creates a bump at the top of the shoulder where the sheer sleeve lays over the bulky seam allowance of the shoulder.

This is an image of my new seam. See how flat it lays.

In order to do this I had to separate the shoulder seams very similar to this prom dress that I altered back in the spring . This difference is that one did not have the added complication of the sleeve. When I took apart the layers that gave me access to the sleeve seam, them I recreated the orignial french seam look so that there would be no raw edges showing. 

For projects like this it is super helpful to have a dress form. When I first started the business over ten years ago I purchased this form from dritz and it has held up quite well.

For more of my favorite sewing tools for alterations you can check out this post.

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