Welcome! If the pants are too long, the dress is too big, the zipper gave out, or the wedding is in six weeks and the gown doesn't fit yet, you've found the right page. My name is Marisol and I have been sewing for other people for twenty years. My shop is on Main Street next to the dry cleaner, and I do all the work myself, by hand and on my own machines. Nothing gets sent out.

Good alterations are the difference between clothes that fit and clothes that look like they fit. A suit off the rack fits nobody. A dress from the catalog fits the model. I make them fit you, and I charge fair prices for it, which are all listed below so there are no surprises.

Under normal conditions:

• Hems, buttons, simple zippers: 2 to 3 days. Drop it off Monday, pick it up Thursday.
• Taking in, suits, lined pieces: about a week.
• Prom and bridesmaid dresses: allow two weeks, and come in for a fitting first.
• Wedding gowns: please read the section below and plan on six to eight weeks.

"Normal conditions" means not the last two weeks before prom (late April, early May), not the week before Easter, and not the fall wedding season, which is now. Right now, in September and October, plan on adding a few days to everything. I will always tell you the real pickup date when you drop off, and if I can't make a date you need, I'll say so, and I'd rather say so than promise and be late.

Wedding gowns are the biggest part of my work and the part I'm proudest of. I have fitted gowns for something over three hundred brides, plus their mothers and their bridesmaids. A gown is usually several jobs in one: the hem (often with a lining and a crinoline underneath, each hemmed separately), the bodice taken in, the bustle put in so the train can be hooked up for the reception, sometimes the straps, sometimes cups sewn in, sometimes a whole row of loops and buttons that has to come off and go back on. It is not a Tuesday job.

Here's what I ask of every bride:

1. Call as soon as you have the gown. For a fall wedding, I like to see you by early August. I am booked now through the middle of November and taking appointments for December and for spring. The autumn is my busiest season; September and October Saturdays fill up first every year.
2. Bring your shoes and the undergarments you'll wear to every fitting. Every one. A hem set with flats is wrong by two inches when you put on heels.
3. Plan on two fittings, sometimes three. The first is for pins and measurements. The second is to check everything. The third, if needed, is a week or so before the wedding.
4. Don't plan to lose weight after the last fitting. Please. I've re-done more bodices for this reason than any other, and the week before a wedding is not the time.
5. I'll give you a written quote at the first fitting, after I see what the gown needs. Most gowns run between $85 and $250 here, depending on the work. A simple hem and bustle is at the low end. Beading, lace edges that have to be removed and reattached, and full re-cuts are at the top.

Bridesmaids: bring all the girls in together if you can. It saves everybody a trip, and it lets me make the hems match, which the photographer will thank you for.

• Wear what you'll wear with it. The right shoes, the right belt, the right undergarments. A suit hem is set to the shoes; a dress fits differently over a slip.
• Stand the way you stand. Don't stand up extra straight for me at the fitting. I'll get the hem perfect for a posture you never use.
• Buy for the biggest part of you and let me take in the rest. A jacket that fits in the shoulders can be taken in at the sides and back; a jacket that's tight in the shoulders can't be fixed. Pants that fit in the seat and thigh can be hemmed and tapered; pants that are too tight there have nowhere to go. Letting out is limited to what's in the seam allowance, and that's usually half an inch to an inch, total.
• Look at the details before you buy. Pants with a wide hem allowance can be let down; pants with a narrow one can't. Jackets with real working buttonholes on the sleeves are expensive to shorten. A skirt with a border print can't be hemmed without losing the border.
• Wash it first if it's cotton or something that might shrink, then bring it in. I hem to the length it will be, not the length it is.
• Tell me how you'll wear it. "I'll only wear these with boots." "This is for a job interview." "I want it loose, I'm going to eat." It all changes what I do.
• Ask. If you don't know whether something can be done, bring it in. Looking is free. Sometimes the honest answer is "don't spend the money on it," and I'll tell you that too.

I learned to sew from my mother, who learned from hers, and I did my first paid alteration, a pair of my uncle's work pants, when I was twelve. I sewed for a bridal shop through most of the 1980s, doing gowns on a table in the back with a radio, and then spent four years in the tailoring department of a big department store that isn't there anymore, which is where I learned men's suits from a gentleman who had been doing them since before I was born. I opened my own shop in the spring of 1991. This September makes twenty years since that first bridal shop job.

I work alone, on purpose. When you drop off a garment, the person who pins it is the person who sews it is the person who checks it is the person who hands it back to you. If something is not right, you tell me, and I fix it, no charge and no argument. That's the whole policy.

The shop is small. There is a fitting room with a good mirror and a real door, a rack of pickups, three machines, a serger, a wall of thread, and more pins on the floor than I'd like. There is usually a cup of coffee going. Kids are welcome; I have a box of buttons they can sort.

Marisol's Alterations & Tailoring is on Main Street, next door to the dry cleaner, across from the bank. Parking on the street or in the lot behind the building.

Telephone: (555) 555-0147 (if I'm at the machine I let it ring to the answering machine, leave a message and I'll call back at lunch)
E-mail: [email protected] (I check it every evening)

Walk-ins are fine for drop-offs. For wedding gowns and anything that needs a fitting, please call ahead so I can give you my full attention.