A Disaster Narrowly Averted

As I mentioned in my previous post, my daughter bought a dress to wear in her brother-in-law's wedding, rather than having me make the Maggie London dress. She took the dress, which was cleverly purchased off the sale rack at Nordstrom, to the cleaner this week to have it steamed.

Daughter called this afternoon in a panic. She had picked the dress up today and there was a small, a tiny, a miniscule cut in the fabric, at the bottom of the center front pleat. She brought the dress over for me to have a look. The tiny cut was right right below the pleat and right on the pressed edge. It didn't show much, but it did show. I used a tiny piece of fusible knit interfacing on the inside to reinforce the area, then stitched the pleat another quarter of an inch down, turning the pressed edges under slightly to hide the cut. It worked acceptably well.

Now that cut may have been there before she dropped it off at the cleaners but there's no way to know for sure. Even though she asked that the dress be steamed, they pressed it; so what were soft folds became sharp creases. I suspect that the flaw was hidden in the fold and only became obvious when the pleats were pressed.

And as it turns out, they cut was the least of the problem. Not only did they do a poor job of pressing, but they managed to shrink the dress as well. Seriously, I could barely zip it up, even though it fit perfectly last week. I was certain that I was going to rip it if I pulled it together any tighter. We did finally manage to zip it all the way up, but it's uncomfortably tight. She figures she can wear it for the pictures and the ceremony, then change afterwards.

So as the title implies, disaster was averted, but by the narrowest of margins.