Dress alteration: secret waistband.

I have a dress made of stretch fabric and it's got lots of layers so it's heavy, stretching down from the shoulders under its own weight, so I feel like I have to keep hitching it up. That kind of annoyance hinders my cost per wear. I think it was $70 and I've had it almost a year and only worn it half a dozen times.

BUT I found a solution on the internet, I think it was called "hidden stays" or something, but I can't find it now. Basically, a secret waistband inside a dress to pull the weight up around your waist instead of all off the shoulders/bodice. The one I found had a ribbon you tie around your waist on the inside of the dress. Since my dress has layers, I could easily sew things to the inside layer without it showing.

I got a piece of elastic, safety-pinned it snugly around my waist. Waistband.

Then I put the dress on over the top, and pinned it to the elastic around the waist. Then took it all off in one go, fixed the pins a bit straighter. So the waistband is pinned to the inside of the dress.

And sewed the elastic to the inside of the dress, to the inside layer only. I tried hand-sewing, but elastic is really hard to get a needle through so I ended up getting out the machine and doing a zig zag stitch.

Now it doesn't all hang off the shoulders, it hangs off my waist! Also the elastic kind of holds my tummy in a bit. Not in a corsetty way but when you wear a dress with no waist your tummy feels no resistance so it takes advantage of the freedom and lets itself go, but with a waistband it knows there is a limit. Like the difference of putting on jeans after you've worn track pants. I maybe should have wrapped the elastic in something soft so that it isn't so scratchy, I'll have to see how I go when I wear it for a day.

So I'm proud of that, I've made a dress less annoying and more wearable with a clever hidden elastic trick. I'm not proud that I watched Big Brother at the same time.