Introduction: How to Take an Old 80's Prom Dress and Make It 2008!
Materials:
Vintage 80's dress that is desperate for a makeover
sewing machine
scissors
pins
additional embellishments of your choice
Step 1: Deconstruction
1. First, Its very important to study your garment. Sketch out a drawing to plan out exactly what you want to do. We decided to take this extremely puffy 80's prom dress and change it up into a cute and sexy, short black dress for this decade.
2. Start the deconstruction of your dress.
3. Begin by cutting off the puffy sleeves, and we decided to set them aside for later.
4. Then cut off the skirt. If you have ruffles on the bottom, as we did, separate the ruffles from the main skirt to get a large piece of flat fabric.
6. Cut out the old boning and save to use later.
Step 2: The Corset Pattern
7. The skirt on our dress was longer in the back, so we used some of that fabric for our corset, making sure to leave the shape around the waistline, and enough length for a skirt. Most of the dresses worn in the 80's have many layers of fabric, and you will only need one for the skirt, so set it aside. Grab another large piece of fabric and iron it flat.
8. Go to the Blog at Threadbanger.com and look at the corset pattern used in the Valentin's Day Episode [(http://www.threadbanger.com/episode/THR_20080208) Valentin's Day Episode]. Print out the pattern on a large piece of paper, and cut it out.
9. Flip your fabric wrong-side-up and trace your corset pattern, connecting the front so it will lace up in the back.
10. Cut it out about one inch outside the line to leave room for seem allowance.
11. Repeat steps 7-10 to create another corset shape.
Step 3: Corset Construction
12. Lay the two pieces on top of each other, so that the right sides are touching, and pin along the outside. Sew the pieces together along your drawn line, leaving a space at the end so you can flip it inside-out. Next, turn the fabrics right-side-out.
13. Iron it flat, and iron the gap closed
14. Next sew a top seem all the way around the garment.
15. Grab the boning you stripped out of the old dress (we had two), and pin it on the inside of the garment starting from the left curve at the top of your corset shape and aiming towards the center of the bottom. Do the same for the other boning on the right side. Hold up the corset to your body, making sure the boning fits to contour of your chest. Once the shape is perfect, sew the boning onto the garment.
15. Attach the back of your corset either by sewing, hook and eye, or by inserting gromits to hold the ribbon to lace up the back. Try on the garment inside out. Pinch, pin and sew darts along the front and sides of the corset, to make the fit perfect.
16. Then turn it right-side-out.
Step 4: The Skirt
17. Take the large piece of fabric, that was the skirt on your old dress. Measure and cut the material (this may mean you have to cut down the original seam of the dress and resize it, if it is not your size or the correct style).
18. Pin pleats all the way around the top of the skirt, and sew them together with a seem all the way around the inside of the circle.
19. Next fold the seem over, iron it and sew it down flat.
20. Pin the skirt and corset together while its on a model. Try it on to make any adjustments. Once its perfect, sew the bodice and skirt together.
21. Next stack all of the layers of tool, from your old dress, on top of each other and pin them along the edge.
22. Then sew two seems along the edge using a zigzag stitch, leaving about an inch in between them. Attach a safety pin to a piece of elastic, and thread it through the casing.
Step 5: The Finally
23. For a Final touch take out those puffy sleeves from the old dress, and sew the ends of them together to wear around your neck.
14. Put that all together, and you have a super cute and classy, new look for prom.
For all you guys out there, check out our instructable on bow ties or our episode at threadbanger.com.
