You might have seen, if you follow me on Instagram, the fun peachy-champagne colored dress I was pondering at Altar’d State.

I had a giftcard AND the dress was on sale for about 12 or 13 bucks… but–yowza–it was short. I’m pretty sure that even if I could pull off a skirt that short, that I would be wildly uncomfortable the whole time. So not worth it. BUT, with its faded peach color and pretty lace overlay, it was too good to pass up at that price, so I snagged it.

But never fear, I had an adorable lengthening solution in mind! I’ve seen lace full slip and half slip dress extenders at Altar’d State before, and felt confident they would be a pretty straight-forward DIY. [And they are!]

Here’s how you can make one too!

Grab an old full slip and a rotary cutter or scissors (I gab all about how much I love my cutter & mat over here).

Put the slip on under the dress you want to extend, and mark the length of the dress on the slip. [I put a dot on either side of the slip with an orange marker–you can see one of the orange marks in the left center of above photo. The straps on this slip are adjustable, but I wanted a ballpark for how much to cut off the knee-length slip.]

Next grab some lace fabric. [I used an old lace curtain panel found in a remnant bin at my local foam & fabric shop. It was sold by weight, so all the lace used for this project, plus tons leftover, cost me about a dollar! I cut about 3″ off one side of the panel, and about 5″ off the other side to make a layered ruffle.] I love the decorative scalloped edge!

Make sure you have two strips of lace each long enough to go around your slip hem one-and-a-half to two times. You can do a 1:1 ratio of lace to slip hem, and simply sew it flat… But you KNOW how I LOVE a good ruffle!

Sew the ends right sides together and turn right side out to form two connected loops (one stacked loop, if you will, like shown above).

Pin your lace tube to the bottom of the hem; you will have more lace than hem, so space your lace evenly around the bottom of your hem by pinning the centers and sides first. [Usually, I pin right sides together, but I sewed the raw lace straight to the right side of the slip raw hem.]

So when you take it to your machine to sew, you will have more lace in each pinned section than you have slip.

Keeping your slip flat underneath, scrunch your lace on top and feed it through gathered as you sew. Gather a section then sew; gather and sew, gather and sew. The pinned sections help keep your gather even. [Of course, if you are more comfortable ruffling before you sew, you can follow this simple ruffling tutorial here.]

And shazam! Before you know it, you’ve got an adjustable lace-ruffle hemmed slip, perfect for extending any dress you want!

So I was anniversary date night ready after all! And feeling comfortable to boot!

Why does my hair look so crazy in this picture? Meh, whatevs, at least my skirt is cute. 🙂

I wore this slip under a more casual kelly green jersey dress, too, this week, and it added a perfect bit of length and style to a plain old piece that had been languishing in the back of my closet. Yay!

[Anyhoo, this is off topic, but for those who were playing along on Instagram, here are the shoes I chose for my anniversary date…

…And here is the purse, one I’ve had for years and years and years from The Gap (and another peek at the slip)…

The necklace was not as bold as I’d wanted, but it is a fun piece from Charming Charlie. At least my hair looks like it improved as the night wore on! My hubs snapped this at dinner. 🙂

This is totally my new favorite piece of “clothing”! Wheeeee!