Living in a warm climate, I planned to wear a dress for my special birthday dinner outing last week. But the evening of my birthday was cold and rainy – boo! I decided to wear a dress I bought a few years ago in St. Augustine – a convertible dress by Elan-USA that can be twisted and tied in lots of different ways. The plan was to fashion a dress with sleeves to keep warm.

But as soon as I put the dress on, I was reminded why I rarely wear it: it’s too long. Being five feet small, the dress is almost ankle length on me, which makes it feel a little too formal. But the dress itself is made out of a jersey-knit material and is supposed to be a semi-casual dress. I would never actually wear it for a formal occasion.

I picked up the hem of the dress to examine it, wondering if I could attempt to hem it myself, and was shocked to see that the dress had no hem at all! It looked like freshly cut, jersey knit fabric. How come I had never noticed that before?

With only 30 minutes to spare before my birthday dinner, I pinned the heck out of the non-hemmed-dress and grabbed my rotary cutter. There was a moment of hesitation where the rotary cutter just hovered about the fabric while I panicked. What if I ruined it? But if I wanted to wear the dress to dinner, there wasn’t time to think about negative consequences…

So I cut. And cut. And cut. Then, the moment of truth: Dress + Lindsay + Mirror.

It… was… PERFECT! I think I’ll be wearing it more often now that it’s the proper length. And now I have a long, thick remnant of fabric leftover that I can use as an extra sash for the dress.

I wouldn’t have had the confidence to make the cut without my newfound interest in sewing. I never would have looked at the hem of the dress in the first place!

Have you ever made a last minute alteration?