A few years ago, a friend gave me this gorgeous 1930’s/1940’s era dress with rips in the armhole. She thought I could use the fabric or make a pattern from it. She didn’t think it was ever going to be wearable again.

This blog post is about how I fixed the dress so it could be worn again. I was lucky, in that the dress had side ties the could be removed and used for extra fabric. After undoing those seams, and pressing the fabric, I had enough to make patches that I eventually sewed back on.

The biggest issues on the dress were that there were rips in the fabric around the armholes on both the dress and the sleeve. It looks like perspiration was the culprit, which, if not washed out, can degrade the structure of the fabric. This is a Rayon dress, so It’s likely that the wearers never washed it or only dry cleaned it. Rayon can shrink so it’s a tricky fiber to deal with. Sometimes, steam will release the fibers, after washing and it will grow back to it’s original size.

From the tie fabric, I created two crescent shaped patches for the left armhole that would cover the ripped fabric and stabilize the area. After undoing the armhole seam, the patches were pinned and sewn (or appliqued) into place.

After the patches were set on the left sleeve, the armhole seam was re-sewn. You can see in the photo above the fabric rips that the patches covered up.

The right armhole had only a few tears and wasn’t damaged as extremely as the left side. I was able to create a tear drop shaped patch which was pinned over the armhole and sides eam, at the underarm and sewn in place.

In addition to the armhole degradation, the side seams needed mending as well. On one side, I reinforced the side with the holes, with interfacing and then re-stitched the seam, moving it inward to avoid the wholes in the fabric.

I made a similar correction on the other side, and you can see from the photos above that the fabric was hand stitched together to prevent it from ripping further.

There were pinhole tears near the hem. These seemed seemed less likely to tear so were just left as is. The only way I could really have fixed these, in retrospect, would have been to make an applique out of scrap fabric, to ether cover from the front side or from the back side. It has been over a year, I think, since I made these fixes, so I can’t really remember my thinking at the time.

In any case, It was sold on Etsy a short time after mending, with all the mends disclosed. There was life to be had in this pretty dress and I’m so happy that it found a good home. I was also recently gifted an unfinished crazy quilt made with fabric that came from vintage dresses of a similar era to this one. I’m planning on donating it to Lacis since I have too many mending projects in the works already.

Next up is a 1950’s rayon dress with a stain right in the front. I’ve been pondering that mend for quite a while now, so keep a look out for that post in coming weeks.

And if you are interested in learning mending techniques for yourself, check out our Mending Matters Sewing Class. It will be held ONLINE via Zoom the last Wednesday of every month from 6-8pm PST. You can find out more here : Mending Matters

Until next time, Happy Sewing!