A longer little dress

The past few months found me on an eBay shopping spree, in which I bought a dresses on sight and was inevitably disappointed when they arrived. I was thrilled to the teeth when I found this sequined, full-skirted party dress for only 7 dollars, but when I put it on, I found the waistband hit an inch or two above my natural waist, making me look short and squat.

What to do, what to do? Obviously lower the waistline, but how? 

I thought about removing some of the tulle from the skirt and using it to extend the straps, but I decided the incision site would be too obvious, so I went to the fabric store and bought a 6-inch length of black chiffon for 70 cents.

I sewed it into a tube shape and ironed it flat.

I tried to neatly open the seams at the top of the existing shoulders, but finding actual thread among all those sequins was hard, and all my dissection started laddering the fragile lining, so gave up on that idea and just cut the shoulders open.

Then I folded the raw edges inside and sewed them down so they wouldn't fray while I figured out how to attach the new straps.

I considered lots of cool and complicated ways to attach new straps, but in the end, I decided to sew the strips of chiffon to the inside of the dress and call it a day.

So, with the straps, I also folded the raw edges inside, and glued them with a temporary fabric glue and then pinned them onto the edge of the existing straps.

I attached the new straps permanently with a single row of black thread, and hand-stitched the corners to hide any awkward overlap.

Done! Now I have a longer, leaner, festive dress, which I wore in all its sequiny glory for New Year's!

With, of course, none other than my sequined rabbit shoes that just happened to be a perfect color match!