Nothing a couple of pins can’t fix

A lot of times when I’m trying out a new dress, I have safety pins on the ready for whatever catastrophe that could possibly occur. It’s good to be prudent; think ahead.

Anyone can do this. You don’t need any skill, just this advice: make sure the safety pin is vertical. That may not make sense right now. But trust me, and later on it’ll make sense.

See, I learned this the hard way. I had a solo in a fourth of July event at my church years ago. So to be patriotic, I went to the thrift store and bought a long navy blue skirt to go with a red over white tank top I was going to wear. But what I didn’t realize was that this skirt had a slit in it that went all the way up to the middle of my thigh! Yeah, very modest. And for church of all things. So how I fixed it was that, while not wearing the skirt, I used a million gold safety pins on the inside to keep it together. But I put them in horizontally. So the next morning, as I was walking up the stairs to the stage to do a sound check, I found, to my horror, that the skirt was splitting just the same, but worst now because there were all the gold safety pins inside to accentuate the split. Yeah. I spent the entire morning pinching the slit together and trying not to walk so much so that it wouldn’t spread apart again. Every time I walked on stage to sing, I was trying to subtly pinch it together again. It was an absolute pain. So yeah. Vertical pins, vertical.

This dress starts off looking like a black pillow cover. But after a couple pins, is curvy and form fitting. To pull this off, just put the dress on inside out (your body’s the same shape no matter how you’re wearing it. But make sure to zip it up) and pinch the sides or back until the dress shows the curves you want, and pin it that way. Some things to look out for are the armpits of dresses that may be too baggy. They’ll be wider and more open, so you want to make sure to account for that if you need to.

See what I mean about the baggy armpits in this dress? I have it pinned in the after shot, along with the belt. But since the armpits (or, maybe I should call it “sleeves.” Armpit sounds a little crude . . it just doesn’t make sense since there are no sleeves. . . huh. I’ll think about that later. Anywho) they’re really low. Not to mention the neckline is lower since I unbuttoned the one button and tucked it into the collar, so I put a white cami on underneath. Modest is hottest; also, the most comfortable. And note how you can’t tell there’s pins in either dress. =-) I bet you’re excited to try your own, huh?