Lengthening a Dress - adding a hem

Here's a method to lengthen a dress if the hem doesn't have enough seam allowance to let out. By adding fabric to the end of the dress you can get the exact length you want.

(Dress before with additional fabric pinned to bottom)

Decide if you can unpick the original dress hem or if it will need to be cut off (ex. the hem folds can not be ironed out.)

Find desired fabric. Make sure to align seams with dress seams when sewing together. In this case there were lots of different sections to the dress.

An important factor is how the dress curves at the bottom. Cutting a straight rectangular piece to add on will not work. Make sure you take into account the original curve of the dress so you can recreate that when adding fabric to the bottom.

Additional embellishments might be useful to tie in the added fabric. In this case ribbon and matching buttons were sew on.

Brand new dress with a new look - yet long enough for desired length!