Really fun Refashioned Girls Dress

I did remember to take a before picture this time. Yay! This was originally a regular knit t-shirt. The color is wrong for me, though.

What did I do to it? I tried it on my daughter and measured how much I needed to take it in on each side just above her waist as well as at the arm pit. Turn inside out. Plot the two points and draw a curved line connecting the dots to each other and connecting to the end of the sleeve and the bottom of the shirt. Sew along the line (use ball point needle and zig-zag or knit stitch if sewing a knit). You may want to start with a basting stitch. Try it on again before cutting the excess fabric. Put a final stitch in if you need to and cut the extra fabric. If it's a knit, no need to zig-zag or serge edges.

For the frill, measure the circumference of the bottom of the shirt/dress. Cut fabric curves (see the second picture on this site if you need to visualize). You'll need to do several sets, enough to measure somewhere 2-3x the circumference of the bottom of the skirt (measure along inner curve). Keep the fabric approx. the same width all along (it's a little forgiving).

Sew pieces together at short sides, keeping the inner curve next to each other. Be careful that your seam faces the same way each time you sew. It should make one really long circle/oval. Hem the outer curve. Run a basting stitch along the inner curve. Gather basting until inner curve matches the bottom of the shirt/dress. Attach to the inside of the bottom of the dress with a zig-zag stitch and take out basting.

For the "flower" (which didn't turn out as I'd planned), I loosely followed the instructions at this blog. It may not look perfect, but it looked well enough for me. And my daughter LOVES this dress.

Little Girl Dress from Shirt

So, I have this shirt from the Australia Zoo that I bought on a vacation several years ago and I never wear. Often the things I decide I will never wear that are bright colors go in my girls dress-up clothes. My youngest found this and wanted it to be a dress, so I obliged.

It started out like this:
And ended up like the first pic. How? Well, you can kind of see it on the pic below. I ran darts (for those familiar with sewing), two on the back and two on the front, from the neckline to the hip area. It helped to bring it in and also created a bit more of a flare for a skirt. Then, I put elastic thread in my bobbin and ran a regular stitch under the arm and around to the top of the shoulder (almost to the neckline; about 1" away). That gathered it enough to make a poofy sleeve. If I remember right, I also did that around the bottom of the sleeve to complete the "poof."


I will leave one tid-bit I discovered. This was one of my first times using elastic thread. You only need it in the bobbin, so don't waste it on the main thread. My tid-bit, though, is to leave enough of a lead at the start and tail at the end that you can tie a knot with the elastic and main thread. Otherwise, when it's stretched, the elastic will come right out. Ah, the great teacher experience....

Reconstructing a Tee

I was reading in on my favorite blog, Simple Green Frugal Co-op, about reconstructing clothing (taking clothing you no longer need or like anymore and turning into something you will need or like). It pointed me to a few cool sites, but I spent the most time checking out threadbangers, a youtube group for Do-It-Yourself types. After getting the ideas and principles behind some of their t-shirt reconstructions, I made this from one of my husband's old t-shirts:


Much cuter than the oversized t-shirt it was (sorry no pics of the before; I barely remembered to take pics of my steps). I took this picture before the last step, so the bottom doesn't flare as much. Since I made this up, I have no qualms showing someone how to do it. If it is similar to something someone else has done, I'm sorry, but we'll just have to say great minds think alike. So, here's how I did it:

1. Turn the oversized shirt inside out. Place a shirt that fits your frame on top, lining up the shoulders. With a pencil, chalk or whatever (you'll be sewing over it anyway), draw a line a 1/2" out on each side. The 1/2" is for seam allowance.









Be sure that from the armpit line, you kind of curve it around so that the line from the side makes a consistent line around to the end of the sleeve. Don't forget seam allowance here either!











2. Be sure to use a ball point or jersey needle! Otherwise you can pierce the knit and cause unraveling or a run. Sew in a basting stitch along the lines you drew on both sides. Turn the shirt right side out and make sure it fits. If you're sure it fits, then just inside the basting, go over each side with a knit stitch or narrow zig-zag. Since this is made with a t-shirt, if you use just a regular stitch, the thread can actually pull at and tear the knit, plus it won't stretch the way it's supposed to. Go ahead and cut off the excess fabric, including the basting if possible.


3. I know this is hard to see, but next you rip the seam on both sleeve edges. You actually don't have to do this; you can just cut the sleeve edge off. I liked to use the lines from the seam, though, since I absolutely hate using pins.





A bit of the underarm seam may come undone. Just sew it back together.







4. Along the bottom hem of the shirt, make a small cut perpendicular to the shirt bottom. Don't go through the hem stitching.






Cut along the edge of the hem seam all the way around the bottom of the shirt. This is what you use for the neckline, so keep it!







5. Next is the neckline (sorry some of the pics are sideways). You'll make a line about 1/2"-1" from the neckline seam. Make sure your strip of fabric from the bottom of the shirt will go all the way around easily.









Cut on the line.








6. Next, with the raw edges of the strip of hem fabric pointing up (it should still be doubled over, just like when you cut it), line up the raw edge of the hem strip and the neckline. The hem strip should be on the right side of the t-shirt.








At the middle of the back neckline, leave about an inch of the tail end pointing "up" at a 45 degree angle from the neckline; it will leave a little tail you can cut off later (I hope that makes sense). If you prefer pinning, this would definitely be a good time to pin. Stretch the hem strip slightly as you pin it. You want it to be shorter than the shirt's neck. The tighter you stretch it (obviously to a point), the flatter it will lay against your chest and neck. Leave a "tail" with the other end of hem fabric.


Sew together. The "tails" create the effect pictured here. This is a view of the inside of the back shirt collar after I cut off the excess.

After you sew the edges together, turn the hem fabric up. Sew 1/4" below the seam line to keep the collar from flipping up. Again, I hope that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't so I can try to rewrite it.


This is what the right side of the collar should look like after all that.







7. The sleeves. Basically, with the shirt inside out, pull the sleeve edge over about 3" or so if you want my look. Sew the raw edge of the sleeve down, going all the way around the circle of the sleeve, and then also sew a line about 1/2"-1" out from there (I followed the sleeves previous seam lines). This creates a tube of sorts. Do this to both sleeves.

If you just cut off the sleeve hem instead of ripping it out, you'll probably only have room to make a princess style sleeve. Only pull the sleeve edge over about 1" and do the same sort of thing.



Turn the shirt inside out. Cut two small slits between the two lines you just sewed in just the top layer of fabric.

With the extra fabric you took from the sides or using ribbon or some accent color fabric, cut two pieces 1/2" wide and about a foot and a half to two feet long. It just needs to be long enough to go around your arm and tie nicely. If you used t-shirt fabric, pull it lengthwise so that the edges roll. That way you don't see the raw edges so much.

Take a safety pin, fasten it to one end of a strip of fabric or ribbon. Thread the strip of fabric through the little arm tube thing. Tie loosely. You can tighten it when you put in on.

8. I don't have a pic of the last step. You just serge or zig-zag the bottom shirt hem. Zig-zag makes it flare a bit, which is nice and girly.

That should be it. Try it on and see if you like it. At least it should be better than the shirt you had before.