Fancy Dress Re-do

Cute dress, right?  I thought so too.  When it comes to dressing my girl, I pretty much give her full control of the reigns as long as what she's wearing is modest and decent.  After all, she IS eight years old and knows absolutely everything about everything.

I had found this super cute daisy dress at a consignment sale, and since blue was the related color I was using in coordinating clothes for the photo shoot I wanted to do with them, I thought this would be perfect.  Especially since it's got daisies all over it and my daughter's name is Daisy.

When I showed it to her she was clearly underwhelmed.  She told me it was "ok".  Ok?  It's gorgeous!  The problem?  She didn't like the sheer white overlay.  She said if the deep blue color popped more (my words) that she would like it better.

So, with a bit of an eye roll I set about examining the dress to see if there was a way for me to fix it to her liking.  Since the overlay was sewn together with the blue fabric, there wasn't any way for me to take it off without ripping the dress apart and then putting it back together.  Quite a bit bigger of a project than I was willing to take on at the moment.

So here's what I did instead:

I cut straight up the middle of the overlay, right up to the waistline.  I did this on both the front and the back of the dress.

Then I just folded over the edge and sewed so that it won't fray.

Starting at the front I folded it under...

...both sides...

Then just tied them into a bow at the back.

So she still had the overlay on the top, but I was hoping having the blue pop on the bottom would be good enough.

And it seemed to be!  This girl likes color.  Bright, bold, beautiful color.  I should have known to get a dress with an overlay that tried to stifle the vibrant blue.  Silly me.  I'm glad this worked.  Crisis averted.