Sewing A Loose Dress With Puff Sleeves From Mom’s Old Dress

Hello everyone, I’m so excited to share with you all this loose dress with puff sleeves I made. Over the weekend, I visited my mom and she told me about a dress she hated. According to her, the seamstress didn’t do what she wanted and the dress looks funny on her anytime she wears it. It actually looks funny though. I told her to give it to me to turn it into something and she did.

I didn’t know what do but I wanted something simple. As a huge fan of puff sleeves, I wanted to make sure what I make has puff sleeves. I came up with loose dress with puff sleeves because I wanted to be able to wear the dress to church and also to beach. Hehe, more like a multipurpose dress. This was the most stressful project I’ve ever done. I wanted a dress with a neck but I made a mistake and that mistake gave my dress a new style( off shoulder) which I so much love.

Drafting the pattern was so hard for me. I used about 2 days just to draft the pattern. At a point, I was even dizzy and didn’t want to continue but I couldn’t stand the mockery from my mom so I kept going. The materials I used were the old dress, a pair of scissors, elastic bands and measuring tape.

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I unpicked the dress to get enough fabric for my project. The dress had gathers at the bottom and to get the length I wanted, I didn’t unpick the gathers. I added the gathers to the fabric and worked with it.

I folded the fabric into 4 and then marked the armhole. Since it was a free dress, I just went ahead to cut the armhole. I then cut the vertical pattern of the dress from the fabric and attached the linen. I was supposed to cut the neck but I was so stressed to even remember.

I then marked the sleeves using the armhole I cut from the body of the dress as reference. I cut the length and width using the fabric available.

I folded half an inch at the ends of the sleeves to make the hole for the elastic bands. For the elastic band, I subtracted an inch from around my arm to cut them. I then used a hair pin to pull the band through the channels. ( I couldn’t find my safety pin and I had to improvise)

I attached the sleeves to the body starting from the armholes and then finished it off by closing the ends of the dress. My mom was confused when she saw me doing this but I told her to relax because I’m using girl maths…hehe.

I finished the dress and that was when I realized, my dress didn’t have a neck. I was too tired to be bothered so I pulled it down a bit and then it turned into an off shoulder loose dress. It looked pretty and I couldn’t stop smiling.

Gallery

I believe it’s safe to say I did well with the sleeves as a first timer. Oh and of course, it’s even my favorite part of the dress. I was more excited when my mom said she loves my dress more than hers. Henceforth, I won’t be too bothered when working because that makes me nervous. Now, I also know there’s no mistake in fashion because every mistake is a new style.
Ps: My model wasn’t feeling well so she didn’t want her sick face to show.

Thank you for your time.