Another Shirt Dress

Since the first dress I made for KK didn't fit her I went ahead and tried again. (This time I used a more recently purchased- and therefore bigger- dress as my template.)
This time it was a plain white dress shirt so I did a little doodle stitching to make it not so boring.

I went with an under water theme- because what little girl doesn't love mermaids?
So this is a close up of the bottom:

(Since the colors aren't quite as clear as I remember when I took the picture: the octopus is pink, everything else looks well enough to tell.)

And the neck has a shell:

I finished it Tuesday night after she was asleep and I showed her Tuesday morning and she wanted to wear it that day! I love that she loves it! (However I finished it at 11 and need to put a backing to keep it from pulling out or itching her.)

That's all for now,
Jo!

Shirt Dress #2

Here' a quick look at the second shirt dress from our trip to the second hand store. 

I'm thinking of adding a few small details, like jewel buttons (that what has been asked of me). And maybe a back tie. 

This dress was a bit of a pain in the butt! It was riddled with troubles. First I couldn't get the fabric to fold neatly (I think it's because this shirt was an extra large, so there was extra fabric). Then I traced and cut but forgot that one side was shorter than the other so I would have to make the dress shorter. Then I had to remeasure and cut the sleeves (twice). And finally I put it on my oldest and it's too small, so now KL has 2 new dresses and KK has none :( Bad mommy! (I promised her a return trip to the store to pick a new shirt for a redo.) 

Anyway, since this was made the same way as last time (using a dress that already fits as a template), I thought I would just go over how I added the sleeves. 

I kept over thinking this- trying to figure out how to get it done but it really wasn't that bad.

I pulled the sleeve on my daughter arm and measured, with the cuff in the desired location, where her shoulder and armpit hit, and marked them. (Notice the SH & AP on the fabric) 

 

Then I drew a curved line between the two and cut with some room for hems. 

Then I ran a basting stitch across the top and pulled it tight enough to make the sleeve the same size as the sleeve hole on the dress (or at least close enough). 

Pin the sleeve right side out, to the dress inside out with the sleeve pulled inside. 

Sew the two together and remove the basting stitch. (In this case, also notice that you're not dealing with a tension issue, you just forgot to change the stitch length back down after basting.) 

And it's done- repeat with the other side (preferably after noticing the stitch length so you don't have to redo both sides). It was much easier than I thought it would be. Actually, it was one of the easiest parts of the dress. 

That's all for now,
Jo!

Shirt Dress

While strolling Pinterest and various craft blogs I've seen several different versions of the "shirt dress." A pretty simple concept, start with a shirt turn it into a dress. So me and the K girls headed out to the resale store and bought a few men's dress shirts.

(I had a photo of the two of them brand new but managed to delete it as I was emptying pictures off my camera- so the purply-grey on is already cut, which is the one I'll be showing you today.)

This was KL's shirt choice. She also told me she wanted sleeveless with a big bow and as long as I could make it. I found a dress in her closet that was similar to what she wanted and used that for my pattern.

I'm not going to show you all the steps because I'm still getting used to this blogging thing and forgot to take pictures of steps more often than I remembered to. So for now here's the finished project and the link that most inspired it.

I love my petite princess! I asked to take her picture while she was wearing it and she made me wait while she went to get a hair bow too.

That's all for now,
Jo!