This is the wool plaid dress I mentioned I was working on. It's McCall's 5927. All was going well, I loved working on it. I sewed a little in the evening, on weekends, not rushing and really enjoying not starting and finishing a garment in 2 days. I lowered the neckline and added an extra little tab. I was having such a great time. The lining is all hand-sewn into place, all pretty and tidy, the invisible zipper went in perfectly and the pockets are lined in such a nice way. I was getting ready to hem the dress and then I cut a hole in it.
A hole, actually 2 holes, because it was folded, about 3 inches from the bottom on the dress. This was after I had trimmed it, so the hem would now have to be 3 inches shorter than I had planned.
Um, yeah, so saying there was tears and swearing and an all-around freak-out is an understatement. I kept telling myself it was just a dress, but I just felt like such an ass. I cut a hole in it! And it wasn't a patching/workable hole. It was a big horrible oddly shaped hole. A dress-wrecking hole. Through tears, I hemmed it as low as I could and tried it on to see if it could be saved.
Here's a photo of it too short. I had to serge the edge because I didn't even have enough to fold up. Now, I know I could have kept it like this, but it was so NOT what I had envisioned, way too short and too 1980s and really not a good dress when picking up kids and all that, I just was so sad when it was in this state.
So here was the fix, which as these situations sometimes go, if I am lucky and extra clever— I really like better than the original pattern. I am so happy with how this turned out. I had enough fabric (I always buy extra) to cut a strip on the bias, and then added a side slit and some bras buttons for a detail to match the buttons on the neckline. I actually copied the cap sleeve construction and folded the strip on the bias, so it's double thick, and this allowed me to skip the dreaded hemming on the bias situation, because the hem is actually a folded edge, dig?
And here we are all layered and much warmer and very happy with how this turned out. Whew. Thank you family and friends for your support with the drama.
