How to Add Cap Sleeves to a Spaghetti Strap Dress

May 09, 2014

How to Add Cap Sleeves to a Spaghetti Strap Dress

I'm taking a little break from talking about The Sweet Simple Dress-- to talk about this quick tutorial.

A couple weeks ago I was approached on a Sunday and asked by a sweet 16 year old if I would add sleeves to her Prom Dress and have it done before that coming up Saturday.

Helping her in her desire to be modest-- How could I refuse?

I started with a quick google search on adding sleeves to a spaghetti strap dress and came up with nothing useful. So I started from scratch.

I spent a couple days mulling over a couple different ideas before just diving in.

Luckily her dress came with this matching jacket, which I could cut up and use for fabric. If you don't have matching fabric, I would recommend just hitting up your local fabric store and looking for the closest thing you can find.

First I cut up the jacket and used these basic dimensions. You want the part in the front of the dress to be less wide than the back.

As usual, I was totally winging it since I couldn't try it on her-- but it ended up being a perfect fit.

Fold in both sides of the straps 1/4" and 1/4" again towards the wrong side of the fabric. Iron down then sew with a simple straight stitch.

Then use a gathering stitch and gather in both ends of the strap.

Finish the edges using your preferred method, either a serger or a zig zag stitch.

Cut off the Spaghetti strap. But use it as a guide of where to place your new straps. I placed the strap a 1/2" to the right of where the original strap was, with the rest of the materials going past it to the left.

Right side of the strap should be facing wrong side of the dress, then hand stitch the straps in place.

I hand stitched it so you couldn't see my stitches from the front of the dress.

After I was done stitching all four parts of the straps onto the dress, I noticed that I hadn't sewn the stitches close enough to the front. So I sewed them up a second time, this time keeping real close to the edge.

Below you can see the left, where I didn't stitch close enough, and the right, after I stitched it a second time.