[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a litle advice, I have a very skinny 5 1/2 (that half is important!!) and I’m about to start making the Seashore Sundress for her first day of school (we love in GA so its not crazy to do summer dresses for the fall). I have always lengthened and decreased the waist width in the O + s patterns in the past- usually I have done the size 4 and made it like size 5 or 6 in length. Skirts and pants are easy to lengthen, and I’ve done with the pajamas and some others too…

I am a little confused about how to attack it with this pattern- should I try to put in the extra space at the waistline? also, I probably need to take it in, but since the pattern (5-12) doesn’t show the width for a size 4 where should I do that?….

Any advice for how to do this smoothly? She starts school in 2 weeks so I don’t have a ton of time to do muslins (yes school in GA starts ridiculously early!)

Alexandra

[Violaisabelle]

You will want to be careful when adding length to this dress because of the location of the pockets. You will want to assess for your daughter, where more of her length is. If more of her height is in the upper torso, and her arms match ;), than I would look at lengthening at about waist height. If, however, her length falls more into the legs, I would be more inclined to put the length at the hem line, or if it’s a lot of length, I would split it between the waist and hem.

As to the width, I think I would cut out the size 5 and just use a larger seam allowance. You have several areas where you can take in the fullness because of all the style lines or seam lines. Since you are wanting to do this quickly, I am assuming that tracing off the size 5 would be quicker than trying to grade down a size. This will also give you the length from shoulder to chest for her upper body length.

Since you do not want to do s muslin, I would quite possibly look at basting or pinning the seam lines (this depends on your daughter and her ability to stand and try on garments) to see what you will be getting for a fit. That way you can determine how much to take in on your seams.

I hope that helps get your started. Looking forward to seeing your project. 🙂

Carol

[Andrea]

This was really useful for when I was thinking about how to lengthen this dress for my tall skinny girl. Thanks.

I ended up adding length at the bottom of the front and back ruffles and the front panel. Worked out well.

Andrea

[with love Heidi]

I think this seems to be a quite fitted dress, so you may want to measue one of her well fitting dresses to see if you do want to take any off the seam allowance. I would also maybe add a little extra to the skirt as this will allow her to waer it a little longer if she grows up before she grows out!