It's Hip To Be Square

A couple of months ago, my boyfriend's momma took me to some super cute antique stores in Greenwood, Missouri. These were some of the cutest antique stores I've been to! While we were looking around, she spotted an adorable vintage square dancing dress. She had me slip it on over my clothes, and we both agreed that it would make a super cute dress with a few alterations! She insisted on getting it for me, and the rest is history!

It's hip to be square if you use your creativity! Here's how I did it!

Before

As you can see, the dress is adorable, but just needed a lil TLC to bring it to its full potential!

The first thing I did was start to deconstruct the dress in the places I wanted to change.

I was on the fence about whether or not I wanted to keep the sleeves, but I decided that the dress would look a lot cuter and a little more elegant without them.

After I took off the sleeves, I moved on to the bodice. The bodice definitely needed some taking in. So the simplest way I could think of to do this was to seem rip the skirt from the bodice just a few inches on each side of the bodice side seams. (I hope this picture makes it a lot easier to understand than it sounds. I did this on both side seams of the bodice.)

Next, I took in the sides of the bodice. Pretty simple.

After taking in the bodice, I had to reconnect it to the skirt on the sides of the dress. So I basically just made a bunch little gathers with all of the extra skirt material and pinned it back onto the bodice. Then I just went ahead and stitched the bodice and skirt back together!

The last thing I had to do was finish the arm holes. I hemmed the armholes to make them more roomy and then I finished them with bias tape. I could have just hemmed them, but I thought it would look much nicer and more finished if I used bias tape. So I pinned the bias tape all around the armholes, stitched it down, and then BAM! All done!

So here it is all finished!

I wore a petticoat underneath, but it can definitely be worn without it as well!

After

Thank you, Miss Phyllis, for the dress and for encouraging my creativity!