Modest is Hottest

As most of you know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has certain standards for dress and grooming. One of these standards is modesty. I make that standard a priority as I shop for new clothes and get dressed in the morning. With that introduction, I bring you the newest addition to my closet and its story:

A few weeks ago, I went to the outlets in Park City. Old Navy was having an amazing sale and I bought a dress for about $4.

This is that dress. As you can see, it is not quite long enough, and the strappy slip does not cover enough of what I want covered. So I knew some changes had to take place.

My mom, the amazing woman that she is, found the exact same dress at her Old Navy in Iowa, took the parts that she wanted, and sent the rest to me. Last week I got a small package in the mail containing the slip and the bottom half of the dress (including the ruffle).

So, Saturday night, with no dates and no concrete plans, I was off to work. I knew what I wanted to do but I wasn't totally sure how to start. I wanted to add sleeves to the slip and length to the dress. My plan was at least get started, not expecting to get far at all.

The sleeves were the biggest challenge I saw. I can't remember the last time I sewed sleeves and I didn't have a pattern! Well, after a glance into my craft/sewing drawers, I found an old, old pattern for a pajama set and lo and behold there was a pattern piece for a sleeve! I cut the sleeves out of the slip fabric (cleverly using the bottom of the slip as the bottom of the sleeve so I didn't have to hem it). I ran into a slight complication during the sleeve process. Usually you attach a sleeve to a sleeveless shirt, not to a strap. After constructing the sleeves, I put that aside and moved on to the ruffle.

All I needed to was attach the new ruffle to the rest of the dress. First of all, the new ruffle was much wider than the dress so I had to take it in. Also, the fabric was really hard to manage, it was thin, slippery, and ruffled. I pinned it as best as I could and just went for it. Of course after sewing all the way around I realized I had run out of bobbin thread about halfway through so I had to redo part of it. But let me tell you, it looked great. I couldn't believe I got it on the first try!

Back to the sleeves. I decided the sleeves were long enough and stretchy enough that I would just attach the sleeve to the strap and make it work. I had to shorten the straps a little so the sleeve opening didn't have to stretch quite so far. I pinned it really well and went for it (starting to see a theme...). I stretched perfectly and looked great, until I realized I had sewn it on inside out. Sleeves are hard! Putting my frustration aside, I moved on to the other sleeve, sewed it on perfectly and couldn't wait to try the new slip under the new dress.

I tried it on over my clothes and modeled it for my roommate. It was perfect.

I went back and redid the inside out sleeve, tacked the slip to the dress, and let out the slip hem (just encouraging a little more length). I'd wait for Sunday to see the full effect without my clothes underneath and with all the necessary accessories.

Sunday came and it was even better than I imagined.

*You can see where the slip ends (hopefully it wasn't that noticeable at church) but I wore another black slip underneath. I might go back and try to salvage some of the other slip and add it to this one.