I received this gorgeous piece from Andrea in Brooklyn a little while back and finally got to getting it wear worthy!

Hi Marisa!

I was cleaning out my closet when I came across this dress I bought on eBay years back. I love the cotton material, the colors, and the vintage-type, stripe/floral design. At the time, it reminded me of a summer episode of Sex in the City! The top part is tight on me and I was originally going to make it into a skirt but since I do not have any time to work on it, I am passing it along to you as I know it will be in good hands! Enjoy! Take care and happy sewing! Andrea

I was crushing hard on this fabric. Check it out!

I can totally see this pattern and style of dress being something Carrie Bradshaw would have rocked, similar to this vintage piece Patricia Field outfitted her in below...

Small problemo (and the same one as Andrea)...too tight!!

I just couldn't get that zipper pulled up and had to come up with a plan. Guess what? I came up with a plan :)

First part of the plan...tweak the top area that's too tight! I began to remove the stitches in the seams on each side of the body from right below the arm holes down to the waist. This back panel of fabric is going to be completely removed.

The left side of the body had the zipper attached...

...so I continued removing stitches, detaching the back panel from the zipper. I'm keeping the zipper in place at the moment because I'm still going to be using the bottom portion of it, up to the waist seam.

With the sides of the back panel open on the left and right side of the body, my next step was to fix the zipper. Like I said above, I want to keep the bottom part of the zipper intact so I marked how high I wanted the zipper to go, folded it under at this spot, and hand stitched the ends. The stitches will act as new stops so that the slide and pull doesn't come off at the end!

I hit the shoulders next and removed the seams keeping the back panel attached on each side.

Now the entire back panel is open on all three sides! I created a new seam at the waist and pinned it in place as I'll be sewing it down shortly.

Now the back isn't going to be completely open. Inspired by the elastic backed dresses from ASOS...

...and Mason by Michelle Mason...

...I wanted to take this the elastic route!! I snagged some thick white elastic...

...and dyed it to a lovely lavender shade to match the dress.

With my newly dyed elastic I made two panels to cross the back horizontally and pinned them in place to prep for sewing.

I worked on the shoulder area next! I'm making this a halter-ish top so I pinched and cinched the fabric at the shoulders...

...took some navy elastic ribbon...

...and hand stitched the end of the elastic to the cinched shoulder area.

With both shoulder areas finished, I stitched the lavender elastic panels to the right side of the back of the dress...

...and then stitched the new seam at the waist.

Because the elastic was only connected to the dress on the right side, I took hook and eye closures and similar to the back of a bra, added two hooks to each elastic strip and the coordinating eyes to the left side of the fabric to hold the elastic in place.

I was finally finished with the piece!! From too tight, to just right!!