Lengthening a Denim Dress

When the spring 2017 line came out at Gap several months ago, I was delighted to find a simple denim popover dress. It was a great everyday dress since it was casual, comfortable, machine washable, and as denim it goes with many things (and hides food stains). The popover dress and I were fast friends and, with leggings and layered over a tee, it was my winter/spring favorite. Then the warm weather arrived and I realised how short the dress is on my legs. I prefer hem lines at my knee and chasing children makes that length the ideal modesty as well. My desire for this dress to be knee-length was just a dream until I could find the right fabric for the hem, then I did! Here is lengthening a denim dress.

The original Gap dress was classic and perfect, but I do like my thighs covered. They are nice enough, but no need to show them off as I crawl on the floor picking up random kid stuff.

I looked for a few months for the ideal fabric to lengthen the dress, then I found it at Hickey’s in Cork City. It is a coordinating denim with little white dots. Let’s preview how it looks together…

I also wanted to add a small strip at the breast pocket to unify the refashion and make it feel more cohesive and less patchy.

The first step to lengthening it (after prewashing and pressing the fabric) was to create a tube loop of the fabric to attach to the bottom. This gave the fabric greater heft to handle being the hem on denim. It will flop around less and if it flips a little as I walk, the same pretty dots.

Once the tube was sewn, I checked it was well stitched before turning it inside out.

Then I pressed it and Pinned the right-side-out loop to the underside of the original dress hem. The original hem was curved. In an ideal world, the new hem would be too, but I just did not have the time. Once pinned, I proceeded to sew the loop into the dress hem slightly above the original hem stitch and fray edge.

Here’s a closer look.

Because of the curved original hem and the straightness of the loop, I had more fabric under the original dress so a second higher stitch line was needed to secure it. Not ideal, but it was consistent enough to look like a feature (I hope).

Here is the completed dress with a closeup on the pocket.

And what is a refashion without a before and after side-by-side?

What do you think? I’ll add an action shot of the dress being worn soon. Have you ever lengthened a dress?