Correcting the fit of petal sleeves in a wedding dress pt. 2

I finally had a chance to do up some line drawings to illustrate the problem with the petal sleeves of the wedding dress I recently altered. There are more pictures in the blog entry Petal Sleeves pt. 1.




The shape of the sleeve pattern adds a lot of extra material under the arm - creating almost a circular sleeve. The hem of the sleeve flapped around like wings. IMO, it wasn't very attractive. Even though the dress was a plus size dress, I can't imagine any woman wanting this style. I find it hard to believe the designer intended this either. I could be wrong since I am not familiar with wedding dress design. I do know that wedding dresses are designed to be easy to alter so perhaps the designer allowed for extra underarm width to accommodate the size of any upper arm. Even so, with the combination of removing excess shoulder height, recutting the armholes and sleeves, the alteration was not that easy. I dare say, it is either sloppy pattern making and/or grading. I would pin the source of the problem on grading from a size 6 all the way into a plus size. I (and Kathleen) have blogged about this many times (search for "Grading is not morphing" at Fashion-Incubator). Plus sizes should have their own patterns separate from Misses sizes. Trying to save time and effort by "grading" patterns from a size 6 up into the plus sizes leads to problems like this. Of course, I don't really know if this is exactly what happened. I would need to look at the whole size range and even the actual pattern pieces to know for sure.

This is what the pattern pieces and fit looked like on the bride before the alteration. The petal sleeve is a regular cap sleeve in the example below. You can see the extra width added at the hem of the sleeve and the wings it creates under the arm.



Below is the shape of the pattern after the alteration. I probably removed a good 1.5" from the sleeve hemline. The fit of the sleeve looked 100% better.


Now if the intent of the pattern maker was to allow the bride to be able to lift her arms for dancing, then it was added in the wrong place. A gusset should be added at the underarm - not the sleeve hemline.

Wedding Dress Alteration: The Whole Picture?

I don't think I posted pictures of the whole dress I recently altered. Here is the top with the alterations marked with pins. Recutting the armhole and adjusting the sleeves was probably the most difficult part of the alterations. The bride really needed a little bit taken in at the back, but that is one alteration I did not attempt. The zipper and lining would have to be ripped out and I had no time for that. The dress shop provided double sided tape to help keep things in place (maybe they knew how poor fitting this dress would be). I recommended the bride go ahead and use it for the gap-osis I would not be able to fix - though I did fix most of it.


Here is the skirt. Really, the simplest style of skirt to shorten if needed. Just make the tucks a bit deeper. I probably should have gone ahead and taken 1" off the bottom hem too, but I just advised the bride to buy some heels. The skirt is completely underlined with tulle to help give the skirt some shape and hold the draped tucks.


The wedding was this last week and the bride was absolutely radiant with joy. She looked lovely and no one was the wiser that a neophyte alterationist did the job. Maybe I will post a picture of the big day once I get the pictures off the camera.

Correcting the fit of petal sleeves in a wedding dress pt. 1

I have been working on altering a wedding dress. It is, admittedly, a budget wedding dress available for less than $200 imported from China. I am by no means a wedding dress expert, so this little assignment is teaching me a lot about how wedding dresses are made today. There are some things about this dress that I found very interesting and innovative - things I have never seen before. And it is true, I haven't really looked at wedding dresses since my wedding many moons ago. In any event, dresses now have attached petticoats (I had to buy a separate one) and embedded, uh-hum, bust padding. On the other hand, there are some problems with this dress that clearly label it a budget dress, albeit a very pretty dress for the bride. And I should say the budget dresses available now are much prettier than they used to be. They have embroidery with beading, nicer fabrics, and that full, attached petticoat. Much fodder for future blog posts.

I'll show the nice features of the dress later. For now I will show show one of the problems. It is an annoying problem and one I was surprised to find. The dress has petal sleeves, which I have drafted before. I have even had this same problem show up. Can you spot the problem with the sleeves?


Even though this is on a hanger, the sleeves hang like this on the bride.

Here is the sleeve off the dress. I not only had to bring up the shoulders, but take the sleeves completely off to recut the armholes. The shoulders and armholes are part of a larger, but separate problem. This picture should give the problem away.