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Sunday, February 3, 2013

Valentine's Dress T-shirt Refashion


My daughter has had this pink shirt for a few months and she wore it regularly until she spoiled chocolate milk down the front of it and stained it beyond what Shout could handle, so it became her Valentines dress and I'm going to show you how I did it!
Sorry took this picture after the elastic was on!

To stabilize the skirt, I sewed a thin strip of elastic all the way around the middle of the torso. Measure your shirt and when you add your elastic be sure to use a zigzag stitch so it will still stretch.


After I attached the elastic, I appliqued 3 hearts to cover all of those yucky stains.
I use heat and bond lite to keep my applique in place while I do a zigzag stitch around the edge s to prevent fraying. Go really slow with this or you'll end up with a very messy zigzag.

My right side is matte and my wrong side is shiny

Next you'll get your skirt material and place it right sides together sew it together to form a tube. Basically fold your rectangle of fabric in half and sew down the short open sides.

Now that you have your skirt fabric in a tube you want to line the seam up with the side seam of your shirt and pin. Find the middle of the front and back and pin those as well as the other side seam. Once you've pinned those you'll want to pin the midway point between those pins as well to make it a little bit easier when you're attaching the skirt.

When you're attaching your skirt, you'll want to use a zigzag stitch again so you can maintain the stretch, pull your elastic as far as you can from the front and the back of the needle and keep an even amount of stretch while you stitch. This will gather your skirt along the elastic and with this technique you don't need any closures to get it on and off your little girl.


Finally, when your skirt is attached, it's time to cut off the bottom of the shirt that's just hanging inside the skirt. Since my shirt was made of knit fabric, all I had to do was cut it off and my dress was done!


Notice you can't see a hem? I used my invisible hem stitch on this dress(sorry didn't get a picture). You can find a great tutorial here for invisible stitch, and a really awesome tutorial here for applique.

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