I don’t remember how old I was when Aunt Marie gave me this dress she’d made. Young. Early 80′s likely.
I have to admit, it’s not really my style and never was. I kept it because I did like it when I was a kid. The skirt was so dense a doll could almost stand unaided in this dress.
But it’s been in a bin for so long, now.
It’s so heavy, that the weight of being worn stretched it out to the point it couldn’t stay on a doll anymore. And the ribbon in the hat shredded.
At some point I’d added cheap, plastic ribbons to the arm holes to help hold it on. Don’t know how old I was then, either.
Since my back is being a pain today, I decided to do something about that.
After a few false starts and attempts at simply adding a couple rows of support stitches here and there, I decided to start over and fix it so that the sleeves stay up and the bodice fits well enough to not slide off anymore.
I eventually settled on this, which uses sl2tog to tighten the neckline, in addition to tacking the magenta ruffles to the sides to provide further support. It was still a little floppy having become soft over the decades.
I decided to keep everything simple, and used mostly slip stitches for everything to also keep things tight.
Everything fit much better after I added the “belt”. I also added one line of stitching to each sleeve, making sure the stitches were mirrored on both, to help tie the new color into the whole outfit. it’s not exactly the right color, being much brighter. The dress is roughly 30-35 years old, and that crochet thread is about ten years I’d guess.
And one line of top stitching around the hem.
I replaced the ribbon in the hat with two alternating rows of slip stitch, just like the belt.
It stays on again.
Though, I still don’t feel a need to have anyone wear it. It’s just not my style.
