Another alterations day

Today has been spent unpicking a beautiful dress, so that I could take it in a total of 6cm down the centre back. 

The dress had a false back opening, "closed" with four buttons sewn onto four stitched but uncut buttonholes. A concealed zip sneakily hidden in the side seam allowed the wearer to get in and out of the dress.

 It fitted pretty well apart from being too large for my client across the back, so I had to cut off the buttons, carefully unpick the buttonholes (a real PAIN in the proverbial, as any dressmaker knows!) and then move the false opening across before reattaching the buttons and adjusting the lining to fit the new sized outer layer. 

To complicate matters, the dress fitted perfectly at the waist, but was too wide at the upper back, so my new seam had to gradually blend into the old one at waist level. 

Although the dress is made from a geometric graphic print (a bit like a Mondrian painting but in white and deepest navy), the manufacturer hadn't matched the pattern (impossible to do, I would think!) so the adjustment, whilst obvious to me, should not be too obvious.