enchanted ball dress tutorial

My princess was going to an enchanted ball last week with her BFF and needed a ball dress (not too long or unicorny) asap.

We hit the opshops, found a formal dress and some curtain netting and set to work.

First I cut to the required length.

Then unpicked the seems down the front, back and sides (four in total)

The cut off fabric was then folded and cut into four pieces.  I then trimmed them to make them a triangular shape to fit into cut seems.  I wanted to add volume to the skirt of the dress.

The underskirt was made by folding the curtain length ways three time then sewing a channel along the top to feed elastic through.  I then seamed up the side, threaded the elastic and pulled through to fit. Distributed the gathers evenly and on the outer piece of fabric added some trim.

   This helped the blue dress look full.  Unfortunately I didn't get a decent photo as I wasn't there on the night and the photo below makes the blue look waaaay too short.  It was about two inches shorter than the underskirt which was intentional.  

The bodice of the dress was too big also but that was easily fixed by pinch pleating the top seam on each shoulder.  Princess Nienna loved it and had an absolute ball on the night.

All in all, this took about 1.5hrs to do, cost $15 and incurred some painful channelling of my dressmaker grandmother.