How to Mend Clothes to Give Them a Longer Life

Tools and materials:

• Dress
• Elastic band
• Fabric for sleeves
• Seam ripper
• Safety pin
• Pins
• Scissors
• Measuring tape
• Sewing machine

Remove elastic

To begin, I used a seam ripper to remove the elastic.

Sew 

I needed to make a casing on the dress through which I would run the new elastic. To do this, I sewed a new seam around the middle of the dress, about ½ an inch away from the original seam. 

Then I folded the seam up towards the bodice, pinned it, and sewed it down as close to the edge as possible. I made sure to leave a gap in the stitching, about an inch wide, so I can run the new elastic through. It’s a little tricky to make sure none of the fabric from the dress gets caught up underneath while pinning and sewing. So go slowly. I believe in you!

Insert the elastic

I cut a piece of elastic band that fit snugly but comfortably around my waist. I attached a safety pin to one end of the elastic and inserted it into the casing through the gap I left in the stitching and pulled it all the way around the dress until it came back out through the gap.

Sew

Then I sewed the two ends of the elastic together, tucked it into the casing, and sewed the gap closed. 

If all you want to do is replace the elastic on a dress, you can stop here. But I am going to add some raglan sleeves.  

Rip the seams

To add sleeves, I opened up the shoulder seams of the dress, and also unpicked the hems around the armholes, to give me more seam allowance to work with. 

Mark

I laid my dress flat and used the sleeve pattern I already had (from Vogue 8870) to mark where I would need to cut my dress. 

Cut and sew

I cut the dress where I marked it and then sewed the raw edges with a zigzag stitch to prevent fraying.

Then I cut the fabric for my sleeves, finished the edges with a zigzag stitch, and then sewed the seam of the sleeve closed. 

Pin and sew

I pinned my sleeves in place in the dress and sewed them down. Then I finished the neckline, and I was done!

I’m really happy with how this turned out. This is going to get a lot of wear this summer. I didn’t finish the sleeves yet, but I think I’m going to attach a bias binding because I don’t want the sleeves to be any shorter than they already are. 

I hope you found my tutorial on altering clothes helpful. Let me know what you think of how I fixed up this dress!