This skirt is a good example of how it doesn't matter what size a garment is, clothes don't come shaped like humans.
This skirt was a pretty short mini skirt, but the shape of the side seams was totally unrealistic for the size person it was designed for. Here you can see that we've drawn purple lines where the new stitch line should be, so that the side seams are actually shaped like hips.
Then, we pinned the zipper into the new location. the edges of the zipper are bound with the red fabric so this was just a matter of stitching the zipper on the purple lines we had decided on by pinning the skirt to the correct shape on the customer.
Here the zipper is pinned the the opposite side of the skirt, on the new stitch line.
The edge of the fabric was stitched with serging to bind the edges from fraying and we had to replace that stitching next to the zipper on the actual skirt fabric. It might have been easier if I had done the serging first, but hindsight is 20/20.
Once the zipper was in place, I sewed the rest of the side seam from the zipper down to the hem of the skirt.
Once that was complete, I finished the facing around the waistband to enclose the top of the zipper.
Here the facing is being sewn directly to the side of the zipper to enclose all the seam allowance from stitching the zipper to a new location.
Here is the outside of the skirt with one facing finished off and one facing left to do.
Same status of the skirt, but the inside view.
Finished skirt with the new shape.
It doesn't matter the size of person, garments aren't often shaped correctly. There is no weight gain or loss that could have made this work for this client. My hope is that more folks come to understand this fact and learn to treat their bodies with more kindness.
Happy Stitching!
Topic in this post: #AlterCasual
Kristen sews because clothes don't come shaped like humans and people often think their bodies are the problem, which is a problem.
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