New to Me in 2013

2013 has been a year of huge changes for me, and my ever-expanding bump has been the biggest of these!

As I'm 5 foot 0, I'm finding it hard to get my hands on decent maternity clothes that fit around Bump and don't absolutely drown me (H&M, I'm looking at you and the 6 inches that I had to take off the bottom of my new trousers!) So I decided that I've give dress alterations a go.

So, in terms of firsts, this was the first time that I'd done any alterations apart from hemming, the first time shirring and the first time sewing with knit fabric. Armed with my new ballpoint needles and the handbook for my machine (yay to stretch stitches!), off I went.

I started off with a dress like this from Dorothy Perkins (except in the sale and two sizes too big...)

And cut the top off it - scary moment! 

After folding down about 2 1/2" at the top, I made a casing and threaded in some thick elastic, and somehow managed to keep the ties in the back. I topstitched, cut off about 5" and hemmed the bottom. Easily said but it took about 2 hours, but I guess that's not bad for a first attempt!  This tutorial was really useful for inspiration.

The final product:

Please excuse the dodgy photos, Hubs is impatient! I wore this to a friend's wedding last weekend with a dark t shirt underneath, and the photographer took lots of photos of me (an abnormal amount if you ask me - wonder who she thought I was!), so hopefully I'll have some better pics to show when the happy couple get their prints back.

I also altered another dress into a skirt, just by cutting off the top, adding thin elastic and then 4 rows of shirring. I couldn't get any decent photos of this dress though, so I'll hold off sharing until we get a sunny weekend!

Linking up to Fiona at Celtic Thistles: