How can I shorten a dress and eventually make less rigid the fabric (to fall smoothly instead...

[Madelaine McMasters]

The classic way of doing this is to make the skirt portion of the dress out sections of tapered cylinders made flexi(blei). You drape the panels around your waist and link them all together. You can hide the panel tops under a belt or waistband. The shorter the dress the better this works. The probem with the technique for longer skirts is that gravity (which is generally necessary to give the panels realistic movement) and the waist anchored geometry moves the panels down through your body when you sit on something.

There are "skirt rezzers" available in the marketplace that automatically generate sequences of flexi prim panels around a waist path, saving you a lot of time and effort.

If the dress is short enough, you can get away with using a single rigid elliptical, tapered cylinder to make a modesty panel for a pair of shorts that gives an appoximation of a skirt.

Mesh clothing can be designed to conform to a moving avatar, but that's a technique that requires substantial expertise in 3D design tools like Blender, and the workflows required to send designs into SL.

Google "second life flexi skirt" and you'll find threads and tutorials dealing with this subject. I also suspect that there are in-world classes in clothing design that will cover your questions.

[Madelaine McMasters]

The classic way of doing this is to make the skirt portion of the dress out sections of tapered cylinders made flexi(blei). You drape the panels around your waist and link them all together. You can hide the panel tops under a belt or waistband. The shorter the dress the better this works. The probem with the technique for longer skirts is that gravity (which is generally necessary to give the panels realistic movement) and the waist anchored geometry moves the panels down through your body when you sit on something.

There are "skirt rezzers" available in the marketplace that automatically generate sequences of flexi prim panels around a waist path, saving you a lot of time and effort.

If the dress is short enough, you can get away with using a single rigid elliptical, tapered cylinder to make a modesty panel for a pair of shorts that gives an appoximation of a skirt.

Mesh clothing can be designed to conform to a moving avatar, but that's a technique that requires substantial expertise in 3D design tools like Blender, and the workflows required to send designs into SL.

Google "second life flexi skirt" and you'll find threads and tutorials dealing with this subject. I also suspect that there are in-world classes in clothing design that will cover your questions.

[Rolig Loon]

If your skirt is already a flexi skirt, you can re-hem it by following the illustrated steps in the packet of images that I just sent you in world.  They are numbered steps, so look at them in order.  The instructions are quite old, but flexi skirts haven't changed at all.

If you are not trying to adjust a flexi skirt, chances are that you are out of luck.  Most other skirts cannot be re-hemmed.  In fact, most mesh skirts -- increasingly common in shops these days -- cannot be adjusted at all.  You can't even move them up or down at your waistline.

[Lindal Kidd]

Skirts can be made four ways (that I know of)

System skirt:  This has the inventory symbol of a skirt.  It's worn on a classic avatar body and it's a clothing layer.  If you have modify permissions on it, the length can be altered with the Appearance sliders.  System skirts are seldom worn these days.

Flexiprim skirt:  These are made out of a ring of slightly curved flexible prims.  They flow and sway very realistically, but they have one problem...when you sit down, the skirt hangs straight down, and your legs are left bare.   Flexi skirts usually also come with a pants clothing layer with the same texture as the skirt.  These are called "glitch pants" because they help to hide your legs when you walk and they poke through the skirt.  These skirts, if they have Modify permissions, can be re-sized with the Edit tools.  Some of them have a re-sizing menu if you left click them.

Pants plus prims:  Very short, tight skirts can be made with a pants clothing layer, and one or two prims that are placed between your legs to form a connection.  This creates the illusion of a tight miniskirt.  The connecting prims can be edited to match up with the bottom of the pants layer.

Mesh skirt:  Mesh skirts can look very realistic, and if they are "rigged" (linked to your avatar skeleton) they will bend and move with you.  They avoid the "skirt between your legs when sitting" issure of flexi skirts.  However, they only move with your body, they do not flex and sway and look floaty at all.  It's as if they were made from a heavy wool blanket.  This can be partly overcome by adding a gauzy set of flexi attachments to the lower legs, a sort of overskirt effect, which looks nice with mermaid gowns and similar designs.  Besides their lack of free movement, the big disadvantage of Mesh skirts is that they cannot be edited.  So forget about shortening them!

EDIT:

Maddy mentioned classes on making flexi skirts.  There is one at Caledon Oxbridge University, and it's held on Sunday, at 12 o'clock (noon) SL Time (Pacific Time)