Jessica's Dress No. 1

This post is about Jessica's Miracle dress from last year because that is truly what it was!

I received a call a few weeks ago from Jessica.  She is going to the prom again this year and needed her dress altered so we scheduled some fitting appointments.  I was going to wait to review her dress from last year because it is a special case situation, however, I figured while I was working on her 2013 dress I might as well type up a post on last year's dress while I was thinking about.

Here she is looking lovely in her dress from 2012!

It's as perfect as one could get without a huge invest of time in alterations that would probably be 50% of the cost of the dress (perhaps this is a lowball figure because of some serious bodice beading/sequins) .  There is a point to this dress in that is was the most difficult dress I worked on last year.  You see, the shop should have NEVER sold her the dress in the size she left the shop with.  It's unbelieveable, yet believable at the same time, that a bridal store would allow a customer to leave with a dress that was too small on the bottom and too large on the top.  Altering the top alone, even with the beading and sequins, could have worked just fine.  It's the bottom half that befuddles me.  There was not nearly enough fabric to fit her lower half doing a standard alteration letting out side seams.  When I look at her prom photo, I can't believe how the hang of her dress is so smooth and clean.  Trust me, it did not start out that way.  When an ill-fitted prom dress brings tears to a girl's eyes before any fittings have begun, I place the blame on the shop that sold her the dress.  Prom dresses should bring smiles, not tears.

Before I even get into the alterations that were needed, let me tell you a little something about zippers.  There are basically two types zippers you will see on formal and semi-formal dresses:  regular zips and invisible zips.  Both are common in off-the-rack RTW garments purchased from clothing stores as well.  The problem with invisible zips is that, although they are nicely concealed, I have NEVER felt them to be secure especially in fitted garments.  My daughters can break an invisible zip on a close-fitting dress or skirt within the first two wearings of the garment and have done so.  So it drives me insane that close-fitting formal/semi-formal dresses mostly utilize invisible zips.  They have the tendency to just pop and cease functioning.  It has happened to at least one of my daughter's friends on the day of the prom.  Why my daughter didn't advertise my services to rescue her I'll never know.  The poor girl resorted to pins to keep her dress together in the back.  Can you imagine?!?!

The invisible zip issue popped up on this dress, no pun intended.  At Jessica's first fitting, her dress was so tight in the mid/upper back that I pushed the two pieces rogether at the center back and asked her mom to zip up the dress.  Her dress was far too snug in the back--a broad back issue. Her zipper was itching to pop.  The front top of the dress was totally opposite--the top front edge had some major gaping.  Part of it is posture--forward shoulder (texting generation) but the bigger issue (again, no pun intended) is that this dress was made for C/D-cup girls and Jessica is more of an A/B.  It's an odd sort of thing to deal with in a way.  There's a good amount of gaping in the front, yet the dress is so snug in the back with flesh spillage above the top edge.  The back simply couldn't "steal" fabric from the front to get the dress to fit in this case. It just wasn't that easy. 

Think of it this way, however.  One can have a strapless dress that fits great in the back, but there is gaposis in the front.  I once made a dress with this very problem.  The front needs darting exactly where the gaposis is occurring.  Tightening up the side seams does not work because the back is already perfect.  Sometimes deepening the front side seam will work, sometimes not.  It all depends on the individual's shape and curves. 

So...these were the alterations I performed above the waist:

• Create two long-ish darts in the front bodice exactly where the gaposis was occurring.  This required removing beads and sequins, removing some excess fabric, and reattaching the bling.  The goal was not to reshape the bodice to fit her bust (although that would have been ideal), but to remove the top edge gaposis.  There was no way I was going to remove all those beads and sequins to reshape the bodice.  It just wasn't worth it--the cost of the dress vs. cost of alterations ratio going on here.
• Removing the back zipper and creating a new V-shaped panel from the excess cut off from the hemline.  This added at least 2-3" of width from the top edge tapering to the waist.  The extra beads and sequins that were removed from the front were added to the back.

Now on to the waist and below.  What I had to deal with was unbelieveable and unacceptable, and I place full blame on the dress shop that sold her this dress.  Were the store salespeople actually paying attention to her when she tried on the dress?   In my reviews I always talk about "issues" ;) .  And here is yet another issue I have:  stores that sell a dress just to make a sale.  It's unethical.  What did I have to deal with?  Before I list the alterations that were necessary on the bottom half, this is what I saw during the initial fitting:

• Horizontal strain lines across the hip and butt.  The dress simply didn't have enough width to accommodate these areas.  See (at right) for my hand-drawn pic illustrating her body wider than the skirt portion of her dress
• Hiking up of fabric.  The dress was trying to find it's place on her body.  The A-line skirt portion of the dress was moving up to find a spot where things would fit.  This leads to puddling of fabric near the tummy and high hip.
• A good deal of asymmetry.  The right side was larger than the left by a noticeable amount.  Jessica is a soccer player, and I've seen noticeable asymmetry in my girls that play soccer.  The too-tight hip and butt areas were made even worse by the asymmetry which caused the lower half of the zipper to veer to the right.  (See pic below.)  It wasn't a little, it was very noticeable.  Between 1-2", closer to 2 from what I remember.

The first thing that needs to be done is to check the side seams on the lining and the dress.  And here's the big problem:  there was far too little fabric in the seam allowances to add the necessary width that was needed to fit the dress.

This should have never happened.  It makes me wonder what the salespeople at that store tell their customers.  Is it, "Oh, don't worry.  Our seamstresses can fix it."  Let me tell you something.  There is only so much a seamstress can do, and then they have to turn to creative options.  To tell the truth, I'm not exactly sure how the store seamstresses would have handled this too-tight dress.  It would have required extensive alterations at a cost I deem unacceptable given the price of the gown.


At this point I need to get creative to get this dress to fit.  See my hand-drawn illustration of the A-line skirt of her dress with the midriff band at right?  Lucky for me and lucky for her, Jessica is shorter than average which meant I could "play" with the dress.  While she had the dress on for her fitting, I moved the skirt up by about 4" total by making a 2" tuck and tucking it under the midriff band.  I handtacked the entire skirt in place on the midriff band.  I  did this across the entire skirt.  The premise for this alteration is the A-line has more width the further down the skirt.  By bringing the skirt up and tucking some excess under the midriff band, a wider part of the skirt can now fit her hip and bum.  Whew!  We would have not had this luxury had she been tall.  This is also a secondary reason why the entire zipper was removed and reinstalled.  I can't perform a tuck at the center back with the original invisible zip still installed on the dress.

The asymmetry issue was still there once this alteration was completed, however, it was minimal.  I tweaked the side seam a little bit to add some room to make it even less noticeable.  It wasn't perfect, but overall the fit was good and the asymmetry wasn't noticeable unless one knew to look for it.

Back to the zipper, I couldn't find a zip in a matching color so I reused the invisible zip BUT...I stitched the invisible zip in as a centered zip.  A centered zip requires a line of stitching along each side of the zipper (2 lines total, one on either side of the zip).  My feeling was this would give the zipper a bit more strength during wearing.  Again, I'm so NOT a fan of invisible zips and wish no manufacturer would install these on fancy dresses.  Some people talk about putting invisible zips on wedding gowns and I'm totally against it if the dress is snug or close-fitting.  Any zipper that can't take the stress of my two teenage daughters does not deserve to be used these expensive dresses on such an important day.  Zipper failure is not fun.

On Jessica's dress, I had to create a V-shaped panel to add necessary width shown below. 

Notice that there is about a 4" gap at the top edge tapering down to nothing at the end of the zipper.  Create a V-shaped panel is tricky.  A seamstress needs enough extra fabric to create the panel, however, I couldn't cut it on grain with the piece I had.  I had to interface the heck out of the panel so it wouldn't stretch and distort too much.  Yes, the thought of doing a pretty corset back popped into my brain, but I nixed that idea because I was working on the front at the same time.  I wanted to go with a sure bet making the dress feel as comfortably snug as possible all the way around.  I didn't want her to have any surprises nor fiddling with corset ribbons on prom day.

I tried to make the zipper panel a decorative focal point as opposed to a noticeable fit fix.  When I saw it on her body conforming to her curves, it looked so nice.  The picture doesn't do it justice.

Once these alterations were done, I moved down to the hem.  Since Jessica was going to switch to flip flops right after pictures, we opted for a floor-skimming length.  I was worried about her and glad she chose flats.  She had knee surgery, and I worry about hem trips and caught heels. 

Overall, I was so happy to see her smile in this picture.  The fit of her dress is so different that what I saw and had to deal with at the initial fitting.  I feel that the store did her a grave disservice by selling her a dress that was too small below the waist and not advising her properly on the cup size/fit on the front bodice and the too-tight back bodice.  Her mom is a very smart lady who did some research on this dress and found the manufacturer-recommended size is one up due to her measurements.

I do think the end result was very nice.  There is only so much one can do with a too-small dress, but I was able to perform small miracles here and there to get it to a fit that was acceptable and one that would look very pretty on her on Prom day.

The most important thing to remember about Jessica's dress is that it is a teaching tool.   A-cup and very small B-cup girls need to look for dresses that generally have a decent fit in the bust area.  There are some designs which simply aren't suitable for the small-chested.  Sometimes certain areas are just too-large to do an easy fix and when the sequins and beading are factored in, it can become a mini financial nightmare. 

Stay tuned for Jessica's 2013 dress.  She chose VERY well in a dress that flatters her figure and looks terrific on her with minimal, cost-friend alterations.  That's the way it should be.