Adding a back lace-up in a dress

Using a lace up in the back of your dress is a very simple way to adjust the fit of the garment to your liking and it is also a very cute princess detail.
The best part is that it allows the garment to fit snugly at the waist even though your size may have varied a bit.

Next I'm going to add a lace up in the back of my Sarah dress pattern.

The body of the Sarah dress has a simple but flattering shape. The front and back darts lead to the waist.
When a dress is fitted or semi-fitted the back usually has waist darts or side panels. These are the parts we are going to use to insert the loops you need to create your lace up.

In this case I am going to use the back darts.

From the waist line draw 2 marks to insert the loops with a 3 cm separation between them. Then cut from the waist to the second mark by the middle of the dart.

To create the loops you can use any type of ribbon or cord. You can even create a spaghetti from the fabric of your dress.

Cut the necessary loops and insert them in the middle of the dart. When you stitch to close the clip, the loop will be inserted into the seam.

In the same way that you have inserted the loops in the dart seam you could do it in a back panel seam of another type of dress. A back panel seam allow you to place a larger number of loops than a darts seam.
You can play with the number of loops and the spacing between loops to create different effects.