My daughter needs to dress as Anne Boleyn for a school history report. We're basing her costume off this portrait:
We found a cheap long sleeve black shirt to modify with a lace/pearl edging to emulate Anne's dress. However, it's a v-neck shirt, deep enough that it is inappropriate to wear to school (or really anywhere) if I simply cut a rectangle down to that length.
How can I modify the shirt to pull the point of the V higher and make a rectangle neck that matches the desired look?
I recommend that you ignore the depth of the V in your v-neck shirt and cut the square where you want it to be (allowing for seams, obviously). Then, using the cut-out material, you can use it as a modesty panel to fill in the space where the tip of the V is to make a full square neck.
What you do with this notch is up to you. You can try to make it blend in by stitching it flat or you can use some of your embellishments to make it an accent to the center of the square.
The final result would be something similar to the neckline here:
Though, I'm guessing the V left over is going to be shallower than this one.
The obvious benefit here is that you don't have to muck with how the shirt fits. It's not been recut. All you've changed is the neckline.
