Shortening a Child’s Princess Dress Without Cutting It

Written By: Mariana L

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Shortening a Child’s Princess Dress Without Cutting It

Difficulty

Moderate

Steps

Time Required

30 minutes - 1 hour

Introduction

This guide will help reduce the chance of a child slipping when they wear a long costume dress. This guide doesn't include cutting the dress, which will be useful for when the child grows taller and you want to change it to its original length.

Tools

Step 1

Have the child put on the too-long dress.
Fold the fabric inwards to the desired length.
If the dress has multiple layers, you'll have to repeat this entire procedure for each layer.

Step 2

To secure the fabric, place a sewing pin longways into the folded fabric.
You should repeat this step with any fabric you want to shorten.
Remember, you need to pin one fabric at a time to avoid sewing the layers of fabrics to each other.
You need to carefully remove the dress from the child, inserting your hand between the child and the sewing needles when removing so you don't poke the child.

Step 3

Lay the dress flat on a neat, stable surface like a table.
Fold each fabric layer to identical lengths.
After it's the same length, you need to insert sewing pins in the middle or at the edge of the folded fabric, like in the previous step.

Step 4

For the next side (red arrow), fold it inwards to match the length of the original pinned fabric (orange arrow).
Insert sewing pins like in Steps 2 and 3.

Step 5

Grab a sewing needle and a thread that matches the color of your fabric.
Measure the thread to be the same length as the original pinned fabric, then cut the thread.
Insert one end of the thread into the eye of the needle.
Leave some length at the top for the next step.

Step 6

Thread the needle and knot the thread.

Step 7

Insert the needle into the fabric following this motion: down, up, down, up, slight pull out. This creates a circle with the thread.
Before the circle ends, you need to pass the needle through the circle, then down into the fabric.
You need to pull the thread and needle through all the way.
By doing this, you prevent the thread from loosening.

Step 8

Next, you take the needle, insert into the fabric half way then go up, and pull the needle and thread through a little bit.
Remember to pull gently so the thread doesn't get knotted.
You need to repeat until two-thirds of thread is left or until you get to the start again.

Step 9

When there is 2/3 of thread left in the needle, repeat Step 8.
After securing it, you need to cut the thread from the needle, closest to where the needle is.
You need to remove all of the sewing pins from the fabric you have sowed.
For the rest of the fabric or other fabrics, you need to repeat Steps 6-10.