Dress Up!

So, last week we got a birthday invite I was expecting, but not expecting so soon.  And I had two days.  Whenever she comes to our house to play, she wants to play dress up, so I decided to turn one of my ancient Homecoming dresses into a princess dress.

The pictures aren't great, but you get the idea. 

First thing to do was get rid of the giant bow on the back.  Then, poor Brother Bear had to try it on (since he's the same size as the birthday girl, he was my model).  I promised Papa Bear no pictures, so all you get is before and afters.

There were six seams down the dress, besides the back zipper seams, so I figured out how much I needed to take the dress in (about 10 inches), and divided it by six to get how much at each seam (1.5 inches).  So I figured that folding the dress at each seam, and stitching 3/4 in in from the seam would do the trick.  I kind of just started at the seam and then sewed in, and after the waist area curved the new seam back to the old one to finish it off.  This actually made the skirt more full.

Trying the dress on my model, I realized that while the bodice now would fit the birthday girl, the shoulders really needed some work or they'd always be slipping off.  Too lazy to unstitch everything and reduce them, I pinched the shoulder seams, and sewed new seams about two inches away.  The sleeves were too big around, and with the shoulders taken in, there was a weird kind of fold at the top, so I went with that and folded the sleeves over, just hand-sewing a few stitches to keep it in place.

Out of my stash of old costume jewelry came the flowers (used to be earrings) for the sleeves, and the butterfly pin,

and voila, a princess dress. 

Simple, but flouncy, and since I didn't cut anything, the seams can be taken out if she's still into princess dresses as she gets bigger.

And a very big thanks to my model, who was VERY reluctant to put on a dress.