Plus Size Fashion: Collectif Atomic Flamingo Dolores Doll

I knew that I had to have this dress the minute I saw it. Unfortuantely I didn't have the spare cash the minute I saw it, and it had sold out on the Collectif website by the time I had.  Doh!

A googling session later though, and I'd found a small business (Lady Retro) that did have one left in my size. Bingo!

After a small amount of stress later (Royal Mail thought they'd give my parcel a detour and sent it to the Cath Kidston factory instead) I recieved my dress in an amusingly addressed parcel :)

How gorgeous is this print! Its like, the PERFECT SUMMER RETRO PRINT!

Flamingos, fruit, tiki - its like a tropical festival going on!

I have found Collectif dresses to be a good fit on me in the past, and this is no exception. Its just a lovely shape.

The sleeves though. Noooooo.

Can you see what I mean? I am a size 18. I have fat old arms. The elastic was waaaaay too tight. It was actually painful to wear.

However, there was NO WAY ON EARTH this dress was going back. So I did a simple snip and add job. Anyone else with this issue - you're looking at half an hour tops. Just snip away at the sleeve hem - I did it just next to the seam below the arm (where your armpit is) towards the back of the dress. You only need to expose an inch or two. 

Pull out the elastic (which is loose - its not sewn to the sleeves) And place two pins either side of where you're going to cut (so you don't lose the elastic in the sleeve after you've cut it) Now just get another bit of elastic of preferably equal width (mine was a bit thinner) and cut to size. I used a two inch piece. Snip your sleeve elastic and sew the cut piece to each side of it. 

I overlapped by about 1/4" which meant I was adding about 1 1/2" in total to each sleeve.

Close up the sleeve hem - I just backstiched this by hand. Then do a bit of pulling to get the elastic distributed a bit more evenly.

Ta da!!!