Halter Dress with decorative stitching!

I had no idea when I bought a few halter tops from The Childrens Place on clearance for next to nothing how much Little Sister would love them.  She wants to wear them all the time; I don't know why.  I have been having issues lately with getting Iris to wear the things that I make for her, so I thought I'd try making a dress out of one of her beloved halter tops.  And what do you know, it worked!

Jumping for joy

  Not only did it turn out pretty darn cute, she also wants to wear it pretty much every day!  Maybe next time, I won't choose white.

Who gave that child in a white dress raspberries to eat?  

The open back makes this dress nice and cool for those rare Pacific NW hot days--but we've actually had a fair share of those this year, so it worked out well.  

I used the same method that I linked to in this post--you can see the original tutorial from Tea Rose Home here.  It's really an easy way to highlight a cute fabric AND use a top that's not so exciting--or even one that has a stain at the bottom or isn't long enough anymore.  Recycling ahoy!  I've made several dresses this way now, and I've even tried it out with onesies.  Oh, what's that, you'd like to see a picture of that too?  Okay, here you go!

I can't seem to get the color quite right in this photo--it's coming out a  lot more neon than that pink looked in person.

Both the pink print I used for the onesie dress and the orange print I used for Iris's halter were major scores that I got on clearance for $2 a yard.  I really love that orange batik-y one--I wish I would have stocked up so I could have made myself a matching one!  But these projects take such a little bit of fabric--between a quarter and half yard of fabric, depending on the length you want.  Combined with upcycled tops, this is a project you can make for next to nothing!

And for something extra...

I thought that the plain white bodice of this dress would be a fun opportunity to try something else out that I've been thinking about--decorative stitches.  I've mentioned here before that my sewing machine is a hand-me-down from my grandma, and while I've been using it for years I only recently acquired such handy things as...the manual, for example.  This pretty sheet was also tucked in there:

It's full of decorative stitches!  There are a series of buttons with numbers and letters on them at the top of my machine, and I never knew what they were for.  Well, voila!  The code is cracked!  With different combinations of buttons, I can make lots of lovely designs, and I don't have to do anything special except make sure I'm pulling the fabric through at a consistent speed.

Do you see the one I chose?

This was my first try on an actual garment--I'd only practiced on scrap fabric before.  So pretty!  I love the little detail that the decorative stitch adds.  It might be fun to do this kind of thing to plain store-bought clothes too, to dress them up a bit.  Lots of possibilities!