Sew-vivor: Week 2 (An Easter Dress)

It’s Sew-vivor voting time again! (Today only!) If you missed my project for Week 1, you can see it here.
This week’s challenge was to repurpose something. A couple of weeks ago I found a tutorial from Girl. Inspired. on Pinterest that repurposed a men’s dress shirt into a dress for a toddler. Genius! I thought it was a great idea and so cute! So, I decided for this week’s challenge I would make Hailey an Easter dress.

Let it be known that I am not a clothing sewer. I just haven’t gotten into it. I would love to! There are so many cute things out there to make, but I haven’t felt brave enough, or compelled enough to try it yet. So, this is the first dress I’ve ever attempted. And honestly, what a great way to go at it. It gave me the opportunity to take the shirt apart and see how it’s constructed. I personally don’t think the pattern pieces to sewing clothes are as straight forward as they are for other things.
I used a shirt and a dress of Hailey’s as my template for creating the pattern. I was pretty unsure by how the sleeves pattern should be made. Then I used my brain and made a pattern of the actual shirt sleeve in illustrator on the computer. I took the measurements from Hailey’s shirt and sized it down from there. Complicated? Maybe. But it totally worked.
I was pretty nervous about the dress fitting. I felt the same way when I made Hailey’s Halloween dragon costume. I guess I should just trust myself more, because they both came out fitting just fine. There’s so much less pressure when an exact size isn’t important!

The details. I used only the original shirt material, but added fun purple buttons for some accent. I added elastic to the waist so the body of the skirt was loose. I put ruffles along the waist band for some girly cuteness, and sewed on small decorative pockets to the chest. The sleeves are 3/4 length and cuffed, so it still has some shirt feel to it. One last detail, I curved the hem up slightly to add a little bit of interest.
I think it’s a fun dress, and definitely a lot cuter than the shirt it started out as.

I’m pretty sure Hailey is tired of putting it on. On and off, on and off… poor girl. She was a trooper.

Alright- there’s the dress. Now go vote!