Project: black jersey dress

A couple of weeks ago I went shopping and got it into my head that I wanted to buy some cute stuff, probably because I've basically been wearing the same suitcase clothes since May. After a successful trip to Banana resulting in a pair of pants, but nothing from the Gap which was a huge bummer I went to Target and got two cardigans and a jersey dress on sale, w/o trying it on. Turns out, even though I held it up to myself in the store, that is was too short, shocker. I demand my skirts reach my mid knee standing and still hit top knee when seated, which makes it no surprise that I've made almost all of my skirts or dresses.

Cute dress right?

about 5" too short, shocker

Since the hem is kind of a wrap deal I decided to lengthen it at the waist by adding a band between the bodice and skirt pieces. I was going to use a black sweatshirt jersey I have, but it was too heavy and it was printed black, not woven that way, so I ended up using a lightweight grey jersey with some sparkle to it. I decided that adding all the length at the waist would make the band too wide and throw off the proportions so I only did a 3" waistband.

Cute right? Eh, as you can see below, of course the band hit right over tummy and boney hips. Deep down I knew this was going to happen because miracle of miracles the bodice actually fit my torso, so of course the band would start at my waist and go down. There wasn't much I could do about this short of buying a new dress. So yeah, unflattering, and still a little too short.

Since it was still a little short I decided to add a 2" band to each strap thinking this might be a cute detail, knowing full well that only adding length on the front straps would make the dress dip in the front, but I wanted to keep this project to 3 hours so I went with it, plus blasphemy of blasphemies, I didn't really care, it was a cheap dress.

 

The straps came out well, but I finished them crappily b/c I was kind of over the project by now.Still looks kind of cute on the form at this point.

But I didn't bother to account for my shoulder asymmetries as you can see...

So I cover them with my hair. Adding the straps did add length, but really just makes the neckline lower if I wear the waist where it was designed to sit so...

I pulled it down as far as it needed to go to hit the right spot and covered it with one of my new cardigans. Overall it was a Sexy Sunday, so success! I don't really intend to ever wear this dress w/o a cardigan bc of the no sleeve situation. I had an idea that it could be a jumper of sorts with cute shirt underneath, but my finishing is so bad on the straps I wouldn't dare. 

Overall, for a $12 dress I think it was an ok deal.