How to stop sundress strap slippage

Apologies to the gentlemen in my circle of readers: today’s post will be quite unhelpful for you.

What’s strap slippage?

Well, the straps of knit sundresses don’t usually pose a problem, but if you’ve ever owned a sundress made of woven fabric, you know that sometimes the non-stretchy straps do not want to stay on your shoulders.

Especially if you, you know, move while wearing the dress.

Of course, you can prevent public viewing of bra straps by wearing a strapless bra, that still doesn’t fix the annoying problem of the dress straps always falling down your shoulders.

I have two dresses (both from Goodwill, actually!) with this issue.

This white dress was particularly problematic because of the button closure in the front…the strap can easily rotate on the button, which makes it prone to falling off the shoulder.

So, I decided to finally get around to fixing that, using some ribbon and sew-on snaps.

(I saw this idea on the internet a while back but I can’t remember where!)

Basically, I just added a tiny strap underneath the dress strap, which holds the dress strap onto the bra or camisole strap.

(Would you like me to say “strap” a few more times??)

The idea is that the stretchy understrap of your bra or cami will hold your non-stretchy dress strap in place.

Apparently, well-made clothing used to come with these included, but I’ve definitely never seen any in my lifetime!

To make this, I cut a piece of old ribbon to the appropriate length and then held the ends over a lit match to melt them (this keeps the ribbon from fraying, and works on almost every ribbon I’ve tried it on!)

Do be careful not to burn yourself.

Then I sewed one end of the ribbon right onto the strap. I hand sewed mine, because my machine isn’t super great at doing tiny bits of stitching.

Then I sewed one end of the snap onto the dress strap (being careful not to sew through the strap but just to catch the inner side of the strap with my needle) and sewed the other half of the snap onto the ribbon.

The first time I did this, I sewed the snap pieces on upside down.

So, um, make sure you think about how the pieces go together!   😉

I sewed another set on this pink dress, which longtime readers may recognize from back in 2009.

(Zoe was a leetle smaller back when I got this dress!)

This project does end up taking a little time because you have to sew three things (the ribbon and both sides of the snaps), but I wouldn’t say it’s difficult.

And it would be very easy to do this while, say, waiting at your kid’s music lesson or sports practice, since you can do it all by hand.

I found my snaps at Michael’s, but you can also buy them online if you live in a craft/sewing store wasteland.   Make sure you get the sew-on sort, and make sure you buy a size that’s small enough to easily fit on your dress strap.

I hope I explained this clearly, but please do let me know if you have questions.