In my last installment of ‘Hearts and Hemlines‘ I talked about the rising issue of skirts and dresses being super short and worse, being acceptable to many women that I would have considered to be very modest. In this post, I would like to show you how to remedy this situation and rather than break you down, encourage you that you CAN style skirts and dresses stylishly without sacrificing modesty.

I will be showing 2 ways to make skirts and dresses that are too short modest. One way, involving very limited sewing knowledge (because that describes my sewing knowledge) and one is a no sew, versatile, stylish, and fairly inexpensive way to extend the length of your skirts and dresses.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Solution 1: Add a Modesty Panel

This is a fairly simple sewing project. I feel confident that I could do this, but for efficiency and photography reasons, my mom completed this project and I photographed her. If you can hem a pair of pants, you can do this.

This dress was $2 at my local thrift store. This dress was ideal because it is just a simple cotton blend. It’s modest at the top but it was a few inches too short and I wanted to be able to style it without leggings underneath. I already had leftover black cotton fabric from the Christmas stockings I made and knew that my Mom could think of how to remedy this situation (she’s always been good at that ;-)).

So, what we did first was lay the dress out totally flat and measure the dress hem. It was 35.5 inches, so we assumed 36.5 inches for the seam allowance.

I wanted to add 4 inches to the dress. We doubled the fabric so that we did not have to hem the bottom (So that would be 8 inches total of fabric) and we wanted a seam allowance here too, so we cut two 36.5 x 9 inch strips (one for the front, one for the back).

We folded the strips in half, ironed them, and sewed the open side shut.

Then, we sewed the strips together, to make one, circular piece.

Pin the strip to the hem of the dress. Make sure to pin all the way around before starting to sew to make sure your measurements were correct.

As a way to lessen the need for ironing, once the strip was attached to the dress, my Mom stitched on top of the dress/modesty panel seam to keep it from flying up when you wear it/wash it etc.

Wahlah! Now it looks like I paid atleast $3, don’t you think?? 😉

I styled it with a simple black turtleneck underneath since it is not yet weather appropriate to wear sleeveless dresses in Ohio 😉

Solution 2: Skirt Extenders

Someone recommended this option to me after the first Hearts and Hemlines post so I decided to try it out!

I contacted A Slip Shop and asked if they could offer my readers any sort of discount to their shop because of the nature of this post. To my delight (this is like totally a big deal to a blogger so laugh if you want :-P) they said YES! Use the code below for 10% off your order at their shop.

A Slip Shop is offering you a Special Discount Code for reading my post! PLUS! The skirt extender I have is ON SALE! Woot Woot! (Click here for that skirt extender)

Discount Code:

modest10

When you head to check out, enter the code above in the ‘Discount Code’ box and then click ‘Update Your Cart Total’ :

As you can see, this discount basically pays for half of shipping (SCORE!)

This option is so versatile because for around $25 you can modestly wear most skirts and dresses that you may have that are a tad short and there is no sewing involved!

Sitting down doesn’t have to involve fooling with your hem any more!

No more worrying about splits in the back with this skirt extender!

The best thing about these is the comfort and ease. You were already going to wear a slip, so why not add a bit of length?

What do you think? Worth a shot? I’d love your feedback 🙂

Keep on keeping on,