The dress looked beautiful on Amy, but she wasn't too thrilled with the long train and felt it would be in the way when dancing. She wanted it hemmed.
Guess who the lucky hemmer was? I can sew, but stuff like altering dresses that I know cost a lot, is not my thing. The dress had a lined skirt with a gauzy overlay. The lined portion was a little long, but the gauzy overlay was about a foot too long.
So, I did some research. Amy tried the dress on multiple times as I tried to figure out the best way to hem the dress.
It would have been the perfect length if Amy carried this stool around with her all night long!
I called my sister, Susan, who is an amazing seamstress, for ideas and moral support. One morning I laid the dress out on the floor and thought to just follow the line of the hem. I pinned where I might cut. That was a great idea, except my first attempt was not the correct way, and when Amy tried the dress on again, the hem was way off. Fortunately I had only pinned the dress and not actually cut it yet.
So I had Amy stand on the island in the laundry room while I tried to pin a more accurate hem line. The underlay was pinned, but because it was an enclosed hem, I decided not to touch it.
That night I had an impression of how I really should lay the dress out and tried it again the next morning. I laid the dress flat on the living room floor so that the side seams were matched together.
On Friday morning (the dance was Saturday evening), I sat on the fireplace hearth looking at the dress with a pair of scissors in hand. Chris was putting his socks on before heading out for work and wondered what I was doing. I replied that I was just gathering the courage to make the first cut. I did it. Phew, and I didn't mess it up.
However, sewing the hem was another puzzler. I looked online for how best to sew a hem on this type of fabric. There was a specialized "foot" for the sewing machine that creates a rolled hem quite handily, but my sewing machine was at least 30 years old and after checking at the sewing store in town, realized that getting a "foot" would take a few days, and I only had until the next day. So after procrastinating a little longer, I realized that I just had to take the plunge and sew. That is, after I had practiced for awhile on the piece of fabric that I had cut off. I used a blind hem attachment and sewed a small hem, then with that same foot, rolled the fabric once more to create the final hem. I sewed slowly. It was a few extra steps, but the best I could do.
The first narrow hem.
The second rolled hem and finished product.
Voila!
