shorten a shirt dress

How to Shorten a Shirt Dress

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dress

I recently bought a shirt dress to wear with boots as a fun fall work outfit but of course it is too long, about 2 inches too long. I knew I needed to shorten my shirt dress. This was going to be tricky for me because of the curves at the bottom. I usually only work with straight lines because my lack of patience usually gets the better of me when trying to work on a curve. But after a long afternoon with Rusty whining behind me from lack of attention I managed to get it to my desired length.

Here’s what I did:

Stood in front of a mirror and figured out how much fabric needed to be taken off the bottom. I pinned the length and then stood up straight to make sure that was my desired length.

shorten a shirt dress

chalk marks

Next I unbuttoned the shirt and laid it out, right side down, and with my chalk pencil, I marked a lot of spots up to the desired length of the dress. Then,  I also marked about an inch below that to serve as a cutting line.

shorten a shirt dress

two rows of chalk

It’s now time for my most time-consuming part, the hem! I needed to clip a couple of spots on the curves in order for the fabric to lay flat. Little by little I rolled over a ¼inch of fabric and then another ¼inch of fabric and pinned. I made sure to put the pins in to where I could sew with them still in the fabric so I’d have one less thing to worry about. And after all of that work, carefully, put the dress back on to make sure it is at the desired length.

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lots of pins

Sew time! Slow and steady with some patience, wins the race because it is a tiny hem and there are curves, it’s best to go slow.

Try on one last time. Good? Press. Now I have a dress that will be perfect with flat and boots this Fall!

shorten a shirt dress