Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Things to Make: Repurposed T-Shirt Dress #2




This week I'm going to show you how I turned a couple of clearance rack T-shirts into a cute dress for my 4-year-old!

Her favorite color is green...and I'm taking any color of green: Kelly green, mint green, spring green, grass green, kiwi green...you name it! In fact I think maybe the reason why she likes avocados so much is because of the color! (PS- Did you know that the human eye can see more shades of green than any other color? I know. Cool, eh?)

She also love dresses...and leggings. It's her 'uniform'. Every morning she wakes up and wants to wear a dress. Which can be a little difficult, because most of her hand-me-down clothes form her older sister are not dresses. My oldest also enjoyed wearing dresses some of the time...but her style is a little more sporty, ya' know: t-shirt, jogging pants, etc.

I have been looking everywhere for 'play' dresses for my two little girls. And when I suddenly discovered the idea of repurposing T-shirts I totally scored! I've been creating new-from-old clothing like a woman possessed! When I found these shirts on clearance at Wal-mart (for only $1.50 each) I snatched them up!

The shirts are both girls' sizes. The one underneath is a 10-12; the one on top is a 6x.



I started by cutting the top half of the larger shirt off. (I'll be showing what I did with that half next week!)I also cut a couple of narrow strips off the top of that...and also cut about 3" off the bottom edge.


Next I gathered the top (cut) edge of the shirt, and the top (cut) edge of the 4" strip, on my sewing machine, and pinned them first together, and then to the bottom of the smaller shirt. I then sewed them into place with a top stitch.



I next took on of the narrow strips, cut it so it was no longer a large tube shape, and gathered
the center with my sewing machine.


Then I stitched the gathered belt onto the front center of the dress. (Sorry! I forgot to take a picture of that!)

I cut the other narrow strip into two pieces, gathered them down the center, folded them in half, and rolled them up. (This is a technique I learned from this site.) I stitched the folded and rolled edge together into cute little rosettes. I hot-glued one to a clip I already had.


Lilly helped me dig through my button tin and found all the green ones for me! She really wanted to put buttons all over it, but I convinced her to let me put them just on the collar! I also added one of the rosettes!



Here is the finished dress!


So cute! She loves it!



Check in next week to see what I did with the other half of the shirt!

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