A Dress Refashion! Too Short To Just Right!

I bought this gorgeous denim Gloria Vanderbilt dress at the recent 50% off Thrift Days at Value Village for only $7.50 after discount and I figured it would be a good dress for a refashion.

I love the dark denim wash, it looks like new and it has pockets.  But alas, it is a bit short for me.  As you can see in the photo, it has it's own tie belt which is sewn in at the back.  I didn't quite know at first what I wanted to do to lengthen it.  I have several pairs of jeans in my refashion pile, but none of them were the same colour wash.  I considered using a contrasting fabric, but then I thought, hey, I don't really like the tie belt anyways, so why not use that!

Here is the belt sewn in.

Here is the dress with the belt removed.

So what I did was measure the length of the hem, divide it in half and figure out how long my pieces of belt should be to create the new hem.

What I didn't account for was the  stretch of the fabric, so when I got around to the middle, my pieces were too short.  So a quick little refashion of the left over scraps and I made an insert to widen the hem pieces.

Now the dress is three inches longer and I can wear it with any belt I choose. It does need a little ironing though. I also sewed down the button placard from the waist to about 8 inches from the hem to keep the skirt from gaping.  I am quite pleased with how my dress lengthening turned out, it feels much more comfortable to wear and only took about 30 minutes to do, even with the goof that I made and the rapid scramble to repair the problem. What do you think of my little refashion?  Cheers, Michele. Check out my blog Here!