LBD (Little Black Dress)

So as many of you may already know... I had this old choir dress from my college days :). It wasn't necessarily "ugly" but its not very flattering either...... The bust portion is made of velvet, while the skirt is more of a layered chiffon material... at least I think its called chiffon?!

First thing was first... take off the sleeves! The sleeves were sooo tight I couldn't even lift my arms all the way above my head?!

Oh wait I suppose I should show you the before just in case you don't remember it!!

Initially I wanted to have it sleeveless with a poofy shorter skirt.... something kinda like this...

So I took some old elastic... from some undies again... haha! And I zig-zag sewed the elastic onto the hem of the dress... I had pinned the bottom hem onto the elastic in gathered sections...

I figured I could pull the bottom of the skirt (that now had elastic attached) and figure out at what length to sew it to the rest of the dress.... but it didn't work out that way... it was too much fabric underneath and it didn't lay right. It looked all lumpy and weird... It made me look fat.... and then I discovered shirring!!!!

OMG this is the coolest sewing technique I've ever heard of! I stumbled across it on the website of this awesome gal who sews :) Made by Lex shirred front top I saw this top and thought it was fabulous! Now she mentions using a gathering foot on your sewing machine.... but I don't have one of those... So after some more researching about shirring I found this other website who mentioned using elastic thread Pretty Ditty Shirring Tutorial . So after combining the efforts of both of those I went to shirring my LBD....

I bought some elastic thread and used some black thread I already had. Here's the trick.. you have to hand-wind the elastic thread onto the bobbin.... that way there's not too much tension! Then insert the bobbin the way you usually would and pull the elastic thread up through the bottom too. Then you thread your machine like usual with thread that is the same color as your garment you're shirring. So for mine I used black! Make sure that your sewing machine is set to the longest stitch...... and the highest tension.. mine was set to 9.... Then you sew away!

I wanted to do a scalloped pattern across the front of the skirt portion of the dress.. but there was soo much material and I apparently wasn't watching what I was doing.....after trying to stay on my lines that I drew I realized I had sewn a different part of the liner of the dress along with it! I thought about ripping it all out that I had just sewn.. but after lifting the dress up it wasn't too bad! And then I figured why even be uniform... just go crazy with it! And that's what I did :)



This was my initial shirring pattern....



This is more of what I ended up doing...

Make sure when you're shirring you back up at the beginning and end of each line you sew to "lock it in". Along with the shirring above I also made sure to attach the bottom portion of the dress up into some of my shirring to keep that in place as well. In doing that I made the dress almost impossible to put on! LOL I can't fit it over my bum..... but can squeeze into it over my head! This fabric just doesn't really give much... the next time I shirr I'll have to have some stretch in there too :) Oh well JDub seems to think I won't have anywhere to wear it anyway.... but here she is!


front view




rear view


I wanted to go strapless but then I worried with how short the dress turned out having it bare on top was a little much! They always say in those fashion magazines (Glamour is what I read mostly) if you skimp on the bottom cover up the top... and vice versa.... The bunches are kind of hard to see here so I did some close-ups.... The flash made the fabric appear a little gray... but its still the same black chiffon!

Well I still think it turned out pretty cute!! Question is where can I wear this thing?! Is it too much for a wedding in late fall?