Sleeves and Sleeves!

Vanessa with her friends Alyssa, Theresa, Melissa and Sophie! Here they are having fun at one of our Stake dances, it was a big band dance and they were asked to dress up for it! The girls all went looking into the thrift stores for dressy dresses.........problem was most of them have no sleeves! So Vanessa and Sophie found these cute ones but decided they would use shirts or sweaters over them....or" Mom can you put sleeves on them?" Vanessa asked. Now I've made lots of sleeves but have never put them on a dress that wasn't intended to have any so that was craaaaaazy.

I spent the Thursday night before making a pattern with scrap fabric, added a strap to sew it to, and tried it on Vanessa about 3 times (I was using the material from the bottom of the dress because it was so long and Vanessa wanted it shorter).........then Friday it took another 2 hours to cut the bottom off the dress, hem it and then make the sleeve and somehow attach it and make it fit........then when Vanessa came home and tried it on, after all that, it was still gaping at the one shoulder, arghhhhhh, so I unpicked 2 seams and sewed it tighter. It looks pretty good in the picture, just glad you can't see it up close, lol. Would never have been able to do it a few years ago, my friend Bonnie Sherwood has taught me lots........she's an amazing seamstress and she showed me how to keep trying it to fit before anything is done completely, of course she only has to do it once!!

Vanessa was very happy with it! Sophie her friend that was with her put sleeves on her own dress (what a cutie) and ended up winning best costume for the night so they were pretty happy. Too bad I missed it but we had just drove back from Vancouver the night before and really didn't want to be on the road again! Let's just say I sure hope Vanessa wears that dress more than once!!!