Lingerie Guards--A Tiny Tutorial!

During the 1920s, dresses often had skinny straps and were worn with slips with even skinnier straps. This can lead to much frustration! One solution for this was a lingerie pin. These were pins, sometimes decorative and sometimes simple, that could be pinned into the shoulder of a dress to hold the straps. Unless I wanted to fight my straps all night, which I don't, I needed such a thing for my gala dress. I decided to put a permanent solution into my dress. Now, when I first heard about these pins years ago, I have a vague recollection of seeing a dress with them in the shoulders. However, don't take this as documentation! I'd love to see where I saw that, or another example, but I decided that I would just go ahead and make them in my dress. Mine are based on a modern dress that I own that I found right after reading about these for the first time. I was quite excited to see them in a modern dress!




They're very easy to make. You only need thread and a snap. Start by sewing the bottom part of the snap to the edge of your shoulder closest to your neck. Don't cut the thread.


Take the thread through the fabric to the other side of the shoulder and secure with a few stitches there. Snap the top half of the snap into the bottom half of the snap.

And my apologies for the slightly blurry pictures--it was nighttime and black fabric just eats all the light!


Now, make a few stitches through one hole on the snap. Be sure not to pull the thread too tightly. This thread is going to become the strap that holds the strap in place.



Here's what it looks like unsnapped.


With the snap snapped shut, do a buttonhole stitch over the thread.


And here's the completed guard! It's as simple as that, and will end a great deal of frustration while wearing your dress :)