Make and Mend for Victory

 

This is my second make and mend for victory dress and I am so pleased with how it came out. When I was going through my closet, seeing what I wanted to keep, sell, give away, etc. I found I had more than a few dresses that I wanted to keep but no longer fit into. naturally I was a bit saddened by this but I saw an opportunity as well. I wanted to try to save my most favorite pieces by applying the make and mend theory of the 1940s.  So, what is make and mend? It is making do with what you have to make it last longer. In this case, a pink dress with scalloped collar, front, and sleeves. I am really attached to this dress because all of those scallops were done by hand. They were also very labor intensive and I knew the only person who would truly appreciate them would be me. . . So, selling it was not an option for me. But I also could no longer wear it as it was. Since I did not want to buy any more fabric, I went through what I already had and for this case in particular, I had another dress that no longer fit and one I was not too crazy about saving for wearability but knew I could scrap and salvage.  Enter a cream-colored shirtwaist dress with brown edging. The cream in the brown edged dress happened to be a match to the dots in the pink and a marriage was planned. The whole re fashion took about 2 hours, pretty fast. If you are interested in only the final result as a pretty new dress, then this is it. If you are interested in the nuts, bolts, and the mechanics of how this was made, then stay tuned because next post I will break it down more. Until then, enjoy!