On early January 2014, I saw pictures of Stella McCartney dresses with hearts thread embroidery / appliqué details. I think it’s so brilliant and I have been crazy in love with the idea.

At the time, I didn’t know I would be so enthralled with appliqués – from blouse to duffel bag, I really really like adding these details.

So right after I was done with my high-low circle skirt dress, I was set to make my own version of the heart dress. I call it the heart lace dress. It’s actually done relatively quick (well, it still took me 3+ hours to complete the whole thing), so let’s get to it!

Materials

1. a dress* to sew the heart-shaped laces on
2. black lace (I made sure to wash the lace first to gauge its shrinkage)
3. tracing paper
4. ivory tulle
5. a sewing machine (mine is Brother CS6000i model)
6. an iron

*I have this yellow H&M dress that I haven’t worn for a long time, and it’s perfect as dress base for this project.

Process Overview

In terms of embellishments, getting individual appliqués that can be made into heart shapes can be too time-consuming, so I decided to work with what I have: black lace remnants. After measuring the length of my dress, I decided to make three heart shapes out of 7″ x 7″ squares.

After cutting three 7″ x 7″ squares out of my tracing paper, I drew the heart shapes on them. I basically made one full heart (by mirroring a half-heart shape) on one paper square and then copy them over to the other two. I also cut three 7″ x 7″ squares out of some ivory tulle.

My black lace fabric supply is rather limited, so I tried to minimize waste as much as I could. I basically cut three almost triangle shapes out of the black lace.

From there, I stacked the black lace (right side facing up), tulle, and tracing paper from bottom-up, and pin the three layers together.

Now, time to sew with straight stitch along the tracing line, making sure there’s an approximately 2″ opening. After the sewing’s done, I tore out the tracing paper.

It should be really easy to tear out the tracing paper without damaging the stitches in any way. Then I trimmed the tulle and black lace edges close to the seams.

After that, flip the lace fabric right side out, press the heart shape with your iron set to the lowest setting. After several minutes of sewing the 2″ opening shut, one heart-shaped lace was done!

I pretty much repeated the same process for the two remaining lace hearts. When I was finished with all three lace hearts, time to place and pin them on the dress. The only thing left is to sew them on!

Result: DIY “I Heart Lace” Dress

We’re done! Here’s the closeup of the finished garment.

So what do you think? I was skeptical about the whole heart lace dress refashion project when I was starting to draw the heart shapes on a tracing paper (was it too girly?), but I’m glad I went through the whole thing because the dress is so cute!

Hearts and love isn’t just for Valentine’s Day, right?

Thanks for reading; until next time,
Musank

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