Dress repair...

If you go back to the March entry "It was a good day..." you'll see the original dress. This dress was one cause of my recent tiny armhole complaint. Today, feeling annoyed with that dress leering at me in the corner while I selfishly watched "Battlestar Galactica" I decided to work a bit on it. After all it's currently not wearable.

First I took off the sleeves (don't know my my arm looks so weird):

I hemmed the bottom of the dress because it was poorly mended with some yellow (on black fabric WTF) thread.

The final two pictures don't really show progress but progress to come. The red insets are badly damaged. There are spots and holes. I figured I would just (seam) rip the red out and replace with fresh new fabric. The black is in damn good condition for being over 80 years old!


Also, on the final picture you can see the close up of the fabric. The reason for this is I need your input. My first thought it that it's too fancy for sleeveless (which will be very easy to do). I still have the sleeves and they are long but I can't fit my giant modern arms in to them. I thought maybe I could take them apart and try some short sleeves but I don't know if that will work. Does anyone have any ideas? Help!