First, how do ya like that snazzy title?

Some tweaks I’ve done are more boring than others. But I’ll start with a pretty cool one. Oh, and just to torture you, I gave a “hint” in the title. Now that’s going to make sense.

When I first got this dress, it had puffed sleeves. Pause, for an Anne of Green Gables moment. . . Okay, that’s enough.

Sadly, I didn’t take a pic of what it looked like to begin with, before I took the sleeves off. Stinks. . Just imagine it with puffed sleeves that come in and end at the elbow.

I know. I’m guessing several of you are looking at this dress and thinking that you would’ve never bought it. It is pretty old fashioned. But so am I. And it was also a dollar.

My challenge was making this dress shorter. Sure, I could just cut it and sew it up like any other barbarian. (Just kidding.) Or, since my sewing machine hates me, I can go a safer, yet more creative, route.

Enter creative route: slip and pins.

I took a slip and pinned the hem of the dress to the hem of the slip, thus folding the dress under, making it puff up to look a little more modern, and also shortening it. All at once. But I had another problem. 


Enter problem: the slip was too big and too long. 


The longer the slip, the longer the dress. I wanted a short dress. But again, I refused to cut or sew anything. And since the slip is too big, I couldn’t just pull it up past my belly button because it’d slide back down. So, just like any normal girl, I immediately thought of my suspenders. You might recognize them from “Harvest Festival Costumes.”


I shortened the suspenders as much as I could and clipped them to the slip. You’re probably curious, so I took pictures. *sweet smile* You’re welcome. 

This is what it looks like underneath the dress (minus the tanktop and shorts), but you never would’ve guessed. I know it looks pretty funny. But it worked. Oh, and you can see toward the bottom how I have the dress pinned to the slip.

You can see that I didn’t shorten it that much. But it does look better than before. Actually, just now. No joke, two seconds ago, as I was waiting for the picture to load, I noticed that I could tuck the waist of the slip in (hoping it doesn’t bunch) and then clip on the suspenders at the new waistline to shorten the dress more! Kinda make sense? I’ll try that next time.

Finishing up, the bib thing was a little too much for me so I tucked it under the collar and pulled the sides out at the sleeves a little to make it look like lace-bordered sleeves. You can kind of see in the picture. And voila! Pretty cool, eh?