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A few years ago, a friend gave me this gorgeous 1930's/1940's era dress with rips in the armhole. She thought I could use the fabric or make a pattern from it. She didn't think it was ever going to be wearable again.
This blog post is about how I fixed the dress so it could be worn again. I was lucky, in that the dress had side ties the could be removed and used for extra fabric. After undoing those seams, and pressing the fabric, I had enough to make patches that I eventually sewed back on.
The biggest issues on the dress were that there were rips in the fabric around the armholes on both the dress and the sleeve. It looks like perspiration was the culprit, which, if not washed out, can degrade the structure of the fabric. This is a Rayon dress, so It's likely that the wearers never washed it or only dry cleaned it. Rayon can shrink so it's a tricky fiber to deal with. Sometimes, steam will release the fibers, after washing and it will grow back to it's original size.
From the tie fabric, I created two crescent shaped patches for the left armhole that would cover the ripped fabric and stabilize the area. After undoing the armhole seam, the patches were pinned and sewn (or appliqued) into place.