This is one of my mother's old dresses that no longer fits her. I really liked the print and fabric but the fit was all wrong for me. The dress was too big around the arms and longer than I tend to wear dresses. I wanted to change up the dress but I didn't really want anything permanent. I took in the dress under my arms which needed to be tailored then looked into doing another alteration that would be short-term until I could really consider what I wanted.
What I did was sew a small piece of elastic across the front a little bit below where my waist was (just sewed down at the side seams). The elastic cinched in the dress at my waist and because I sewed it in below my actually waist it raised the hem when it lies at my actual waist. Then I just tucked the front of the dress into the elastic letting the elastic work like a belt keeping everything in place. Because of the fabric the side seams are almost invisible which means you can't even tell they're not where they're supposed to be.
The project ended up being a quick and rather lazy refashion that took just a couple of minutes. But considering it gives me a quick dress that I can now wear and leaves my options open in the future for a different refashion I'm happy with the results!
