You know when you have an article of clothing you really like, despite the fact that it is not a perfect fit? It might be almost perfect, but like a scratchy garment tag or a rock in your shoe, a fit problem can diminish the overall amount of joy you can derive from wearing your garment, or worse yet, the thing languishes in your closet, unworn. Today’s dress was like that for me, until I made a simple alteration to it.
The waistband of this dress (above) includes elastic inside a casing. The casing, inside the dress, is pictured below.
The fit problem that needed solving was the dress’s waistline being higher than the natural waist of my model (just kidding, I don’t have a model—it’s my dress). Hoping that the dress had a casing on the interior and a second one on the exterior (all the buttons down the front have working buttonholes; unbuttoning the dress past the waist would make donning and doffing it easier) I used a seam ripper to open the casing on the interior.
C’est la vie, the dress turned out to have a seam at the waist, which was not really surprising. I went ahead and removed the elastic, just to eliminate the discomfort it caused. Before and after pictures are below.
It was a minor alteration, and I can reinstall the elastic if I change my mind. In the meantime, my dress is a little more comfortable to wear and I feel like without the elastic creating gathers the print on the fabric does a better job of downplaying the fact that the waistband isn’t sitting at the natural waist.