Upcycled Sweater Dress

I've been meaning to make this dress for ages!  I bought the sweater months ago from Goodwill, knowing it would make a darling dress for Little Sister.  I finally got motivated to put it together when the holidays were rolling around and I knew it would be good to have an outfit that was festive AND comfy and not too formal for the types of events we participate in.

For example, visiting Santa.

And I finally got motivated to get pictures taken and blog about this dress when I saw that one of this season's Project Run and Play themes was upcycling!  I actually planned on making this dress back when last season had a "personal style" theme since upcycling is so inherent to most of my sewing projects, but I just ran out of time.  Oh, and by the way--the outfit the boy is wearing in the Santa photo is coincidentally all upcycled too!  He happened to wear these pants and this sweater.  How nice of him!

I used a basic t-shirt bodice pattern I had drawn up based on one of Little Sister's tees, and cut it out to empire length at the top of the sweater, sewing new shoulder seams so I could make the opening smaller while still using the ribbed sweater neckline.

When I drew that pattern originally I made a few sleeve variations--this one uses the puffed sleeve no hem sleeve pattern (since I cut the sleeve from the bottom of the sweater sleeve and didn't need to sew a hem).

The accessorizing is all her--she chose flower hair clips, zig-zag shoes, and purple pin-dot leggings.

I thought it would be cute to dip the waistline down a bit in the back--I like the rounded effect with the fair isle stripes.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, as it turned out), I cut the neckline too small and it was kind of snug over Little Sister's head.  If an item is difficult to get on, she will NOT wear it, so I knew I had to remedy the situation if I wanted her to wear the dress.  So I cut a facing out of t-shirt fabric and made a little elastic loop button opening in the back.  Now it's easy to get on and off, even without undoing the button, and it's a cute little added detail.

As if we needed any extra cuteness.

So there you have it!  My upcycled sweater dress.  Quick, easy, comfy, super cute, and about $5 to make!

I'll update this link with the Project Run and Play sew-along  when it's ready (it's there now)--so fun to see what everyone has been making!

Holiday Outfit

This is the outfit that I made for Little Sister to wear on Christmas Eve, when we go to church and have all of our family over to our house for a Dungeness Crab feast and presents.  She refused to wear the blouse though, instead choosing a red turtleneck, which was a pretty cute outfit too, I have to hand it to her, so I let her win.

But eventually I got her to put on the full outfit (on New Years' Eve) so I could snap some photos, and it came together just how I pictured it.

The blouse is the Cece Top from Popolok Designs.  I got to be a pattern tester for this pattern a while back, and I made the sleeveless dress version.  When Little Sister was her auntie's flower girl back in October, I had decided to make another Cece Dress, this time with sleeves, but once I had the top cut out I decided it was too formal for that wedding (I decided to make the Leah dress from Craftiness is not Optional instead).  I finished the peplum top version, with short sleeves and a peter pan collar, in time for the holidays.

The gold-flecked tweed remnant I used to make the skirt had been in my stash for a while, and I just loved how it went with the shimmery gold blouse.

fabrics and trim

 I used the Milkmaid Skirt tutorial from Crafterhours, which I had made for Little Sister once before and the grown-up version for myself several times.  On this one, I added black piping to the pockets and some pretty ribbon trim to the hem (leftover from another skirt I made for myself).

tucked in to show off the skirt

We topped it off with a hand-me-down black cardi, some sparkly tights, the headband I made for the flower girl outfit, and since we weren't actually leaving the house, some black ballet slippers.  Pretty sweet little outfit!

When I made the top, I was trying to keep things easy on myself, so I skipped the invisible zipper, and just did a button-and-loop closure using the same method described in the Leah dress tutorial I had used before.

But this blouse is more fitted than the Leah dress, so it is a bit of a tight squeeze getting it on and off, even though it fits great once it's on her (I cut out the 3T, which is what she's mostly wearing in store-bought right now).  I also cut the peter pan collar smaller than the pattern, and it flips up a little--I might try topstitching it down so it lays a little better.  One of the things I love about this fabric is that the backside is not shimmery, so I can use it for a nice subtle contrast.  I used the backside for the collar and the bias trim that I made.

Once she had it on, she decided she liked it after all, so maybe we'll have some occasion where she can wear it even though it didn't make a holiday appearance this year.

Or maybe not--you never can tell with this girl!

My Popover Sundress Remix: The Reversible Bubble

This week marks the beginning of a fun sewing-for-kids contest known as Project Run & Play.  I've been an observer in the past, and then when the creators added a contest for women's clothing (Project Sewn), I joined the reader sewalongs, and had a great time posting my looks for the challenges and seeing other sewist's take on the same theme.  So when Project Run & Play got going this time around (you can see my dress linked up at the bottom of that link, by the way), I thought I'd give the sewalong a try!  The first week's theme is always doing a new take on a great existing pattern, and this year's pattern remix is the sweet Oliver + S free pattern The Popover Sundress.

I'd had this pattern pinned for a while since I can't resist a freebie.  But when I decided to take on the challenge I struggled.  One of the great things about this pattern to me IS it's simplicity, and a lot of the ideas I tossed around for remixing it just felt overworked to me.  I thought I might have something to upcycle that would inspire me to change up the pattern, and when I started digging around I found this skirt:

Pardon the wrinkly linen.

With this cool embroidered panel detail:

It would totally work perfectly for the Popover Sundress pattern, and give the dress lots of cool details with minimal effort from me.  Problem is, I still hadn't hit on an inspiration for how to remix it.  Oh well, I just decided to go ahead and make a straightforward Popover out of upcycled materials.  And I am so glad I did!

At some point between when that skirt photo was taken and this photo was taken, this fabric was ironed.  I swear.

I made a size 4 for my 3.5 year old daughter, but I cut out the size 6 length because she wants all of her dresses to be long.  And I used the original hem from the skirt so I kept all of that length--nothing folded under for a hem.  The size 4 was a little big on her, and while *I* would have liked the way it looked better at knee-length, she loves it this way. I thought it turned out pretty cool--the skirt was cut on the bias, so the dress is cut that way too, and I like the embroidery that only goes halfway around the back.

I had to reeeally squeeze to get enough fabric for the straps, but that worked out fine too.  And how could I possibly resist making a matching doll dress with that little pattern they included?  So stinking cute.

But, to make a long story even longer, the real reason I'm now writing this post is that in making the first dress, I found my inspiration for a remix!  I loved how nicely finished this pattern is on the inside--so much that I thought it would be a perfect pattern to make reversible.  My wheels started turning, and I remembered this post that I had seen on Alida Makes for a bubble sundress.  I love the look of bubble dresses, but most have some sort of strange inner workings to create the effect that I can't get my head around.  When I read Alida's tutorial, it seemed so simple!  So I adapted her idea slightly to make a reversible bubble version of the Popover sundress.

I am totally in love with the results!

When can I draw on the chalkboard?

Options

What's that you say?  Look at the camera?  But I'm drawing!

Oh, I guess I might as well show you the back:

Artsy

No piping on the back side--helped with reversibility.

A few tips on how I adapted the pattern:

-When cutting out my pattern, I mixed sizing a little.  My dress pattern was a size 3 width at the top, a size 4 length, but I angled out to a size 6 width at the bottom (so a little extra length for making the bubble, and some extra width for blousiness).  For reference, my daughter is 3.5 years old and a smidge on the small side, and I am thrilled with the way the fit came out.

-I cut two dress panels out of fabric A and two out of fabric B.  For the bodice panel, I still only cut two like in the original pattern.  I used premade bias tape for the straps and added piping under the bodice panels.

-When I started sewing, I referred to the Alida Makes bubble sundress tutorial for how to assemble my pieces.  I made some adaptations here too to make it more reversible--namely I cut a 29" piece of baby elastic to make my bubble (it was just under 3/4ths of the total width of the skirt) and sewed it right to the seam where I joined my two fabrics together (on the wrong side of the fabric where the seam allowances are pressed open)--instead of sewing with elastic thread on the lining panel.

-Then, when I sewed the tops of the two fabrics together, I first pinned the bodice panels into place so they would already be sewn in and nicely finished.  You could totally just sew across the tops of the two panels to join them, following the curves for the armholes and everything, and just finish the top of the sundress exactly as the Oliver + S pattern directions say though.  In retrospect, that probably would have been the way to go--I ended up with lots of finagling to do with the straps and seam-ripping tiny holes to insert them and whatnot.

-After turning the dress right-side out, I jumped back to the Oliver + S pattern to finish the top.  Like I said, I had already inserted my bodice panel, but that ended up being more of a pain than it was worth to have the finished armpits without bias tape--I would say to just follow the directions in the Popover pattern to finish the top, but with one caveat--make sure you use thread that will be disguised on your second fabric when attaching the bodice (rather than matching the bodice fabric).

This shows the back of the dress--see that tiny black seam about 1/2 inch below the red bodice? Yeah, I didn't think so :)

-To help both sides look equally finished, I used my zipper foot and added piping to what would be the front of each bodice.  I made the front of one fabric be the back of the other when reversed, so that there would always be the nice finished piping look on the front, and the subtle seam just under the join of the bodice to the rest of the dress on the back.

Piping pinned into place--one "front" is currently on the outside, the other "front" is on the inside.

I ended up opening up the seam just under the bodice enough to slip the bias tape inside, but I think it would have looked nicer to just have the bias tape all the way around the armpit.  I was distracted by how the reversible dress made for a nice finished armhole.

I can't wait to head over to this week's challenge page now that the link-up is open--check out my reversible bubble dress as well as loads of other fantastic takes on this sweet sundress on the Project Run & Play Season 7 Pattern Remix post!

For now this is just a few tips, but I could probably do a more cohesive tutorial on how to make this dress if there is any interest for that.  Let me know if you have any questions about the process or if you'd like me to do it a tutorial!

Quickest Upcycle Ever!

I wasn't even going to blog about this "dress," but then Little Sister went and styled herself with the linen flower espadrilles and boho-style headband (so what if it's a Christmas poinsettia?) and I just couldn't help snapping a few pics, and as long as I had some pictures I might as well tell you about the dress, right?

My friend was getting rid of this top, and I found a 3-yard roll of the wide crocheted lace at Joann's for $1, so the whole thing cost me less than fifty cents.

All I did was put the top on my kiddo, figure out where to attach the straps and how long to make them, and then I actually did cut four little squares of knit fabric and sewed them over the lace on the inside of the dress, in case it was itchy--but that last part is totally optional.

She loves this dress, because it's "long long to the floor," which is her favorite thing.

Those curls with the headband are just killing me!

Sorry you can't see how cute those shoes are (and perfect with the dress)--they are natural-colored linen espadrilles with a flower cut from the same fabric that I got at Old Navy on super clearance ages ago that finally fit.  I have since quit buying ahead for this girl, because she's so dang picky now that I have no idea what she'll want to wear a year from now, but I got lucky with these ones. Oh!  I might have a picture still from when I bought them:

Yup!  That's them!  And my final price on these babies was $1.18.

Anyway, she had fun being sassy for my pictures in her boho getup, then we went to the grocery store and she was admired by many.  This outfit is a win.

Boy/Girl Coordinating PJ's!

The Boy has needed some new summer pj's now that the weather is warming up (at least intermittently), so this is the second pair I've made for him.  Since the scraps coordinated so well with a turquoise cotton t-shirt I picked up at the dollar tree, I thought it would be fun for Little Sister to have a matching nightgown.  And they were both excited about it!

His is just a simple knit t-shirt and shorts I drafted from his one pair of store-bought pj's that fit (awesome Ethnic Animals on orange cotton knit from Girl Charlee.  I bought one yard on sale for $4.20, and had a few scraps left over that inspired Little Sister's nightgown project. So I made both of these pajamas for just over five bucks!  Bear with me while I show off some cutie pie pics--they really had fun with this "modeling
session"--then I'll get to the tutorial for the nightgown.

So, my photog skillz are not the best, so these photos aren't very sharp and some of them are cut off at weird angles, but it is definitely a challenge to get both of these guys at the same time.  We have one tiny blue alcove of uncluttered decent light in our house, and I did my best.  They had me working!

The old "no smiling allowed" trick

Big brother being a sweetie pie

Oops--Little Sister stepped on The Boy's foot

Who's bigger?

Trying out some fancy poses

Supermodel!  Man, when did he get so tall?

I can do it too!

Ok, so...it's about time I did another tutorial!  I've been lazy with the step-by-steps lately, so I tried to keep track of what I was doing here but it still was a lot of flying by the seat of my pants.  Let's see how this goes!

The idea with this nightgown was to re-use the neckline of an existing t-shirt to make a bodice, add new sleeves with the scraps of the pj fabric, and cut off the bottom to make a gathered skirt (reusing the original hem).  I have done this sort of t-shirt refashion before, but this time I wanted to figure out a way to finish the inside, so the raw edges of the ruffles were contained.  I did a kind of weird waistband application to achieve that, and I think it worked.  Hope I can explain what I did!

Here's what I started with:  a Youth Large cotton t-shirt, scrap fabric for sleeves, and scrap black fabric from an old knit maxi-skirt. I threaded my sewing machine up with a ball-point needle, helpful for sewing knits.  I have a serger but it's been acting funny lately, so I used my regular machine for this project.

I started by using a pattern piece to approximate a bodice shape.  This one is not a great example because this particular pattern piece is from a dress that is even above an empire waist--the skirt attaches above the armscye. But it was the one I had handy, so you get the idea.  You can also use a t-shirt that fits well to get an idea of what shape to cut.  It's pretty forgiving.

Next, I cut some sleeves out of the scrap fabric.  I  followed the curve I cut in the bodice and added some length. I wanted my sleeves to wing out a bit, so you can see how they extend down a bit at the bottom of the armhole.  I cut one sleeve first, and then used it as a pattern to cut the other sleeve.

Lay the bodice out right-side up so that the neckhole is in the middle.  Then lay the sleeves wrong-side up on top of the bodice and pin the middle of the curved edge of the sleeve to the shoulder seam.  I like to do both at the same time so that I make sure they are lined up.

Working your way along the curve, pin the sleeves along the armhole on both sides of the bodice.

Then sew your sleeves on.  If your sleeves are slimmer than mine, you may want to use a zig-zag stitch for a little stretch, but mine are loose enough that it wasn't an issue. I added my applique at this point--just by cutting around one of the animal shapes and sewing it to the center front of the bodice using a ball-point needle.

 Once your bodice is complete, fold it right-sides together and line up the sleeves and sides of the bodice.  I had to do a little trimming at this point to make sure my sleeves were lined up perfectly.

I trimmed off that extra orange you see there.

 After you've sewn the side seams of your bodice, you can hem the sleeves, or if your fabric rolls easily when you pull it like mine did, you can just leave a rolled raw edge on the sleeves.

I tacked the sleeve at the top and bottom to help the rolled edge stay in place.

Now you're ready to attach the skirt!

First, sew a gathering stitch around the top of the skirt piece.  There are a few ways I know of to do this, but they all start with sewing a basting stitch (just means setting your machine to the longest straight stitch length) with NO BACKSTITCHING.  And make sure you leave a nice long thread at the beginning, because you'll be using that to pull your gathers.

Some things that make this easier:
-sewing two rows of basting stitches right next to eachother for stability when pulling the gathers
-sewing halfway around the skirt and stopping, so you only have to gather half the skirt at once

But I'm lazy, so I just basted one row around the top of the skirt and gathered it up carefully (by pulling on the bobbin threads and gently pushing the fabric together).  I made it a little bit wider than the bodice, so I could stretch the bodice as I sewed them together.

One trick I like to do when gathering is to pull my bobbin threads to get the skirt to the width I want without worrying about keeping my gathers even, then tie my threads together so that the width stays the same while I THEN even out the gathers.

Threads tied together

Skirt gathered to slightly wider than the bodice

 Now this is where it gets weird.  You COULD just flip the skirt inside out, put the right-side-out bodice inside the skirt (upside down, so that the raw edges line up), and pin the skirt and bodice together and sew it, and you would be done. And it would be totally cute. But if you're not serging, you'd have ruffled raw edges on the inside of your nightgown. Definitely not the end of the world--Little Sister has several dresses I have made using that method that seem perfectly comfy--but I wanted to try to have a smooth inside that would by comfy for sleeping.

So I cut a waistband out of some contrasting knit fabric that I had laying around.  Same width as the bottom of the bodice, and about 4 inches wide.  I sewed it into a loop then pinned it, inside out, to the bottom of the bodice, so that the bottom edge of my waistband was about 3/4 of an inch above the bottom of the bodice.  Then I zig-zagged the bottom edge of the waistband in place.

Next I flipped the waistband down and pressed it, and I also pressed the raw edge at the bottom of the waistband under.

Pressed down

The fabric rolls, but can you see the line where I pressed the raw edge under?

 Once it was pressed, I flipped the waistband back up to expose that little strip of bodice sticking out under the waistband.

This is where it gets harder to see what's happening in the photos.  Before attaching the skirt to the bodice, you might want to use pins to mark the sides of the skirt, and the center back and center front (so four pins, spread out evenly around the top of the skirt) and do the same for the bodice, so that you can make sure you're lining them up evenly.

I  put the WRONG SIDE OUT bodice inside of the RIGHT SIDE OUT skirt (which feels wrong, but is right for this method). So the WRONG SIDES of the fabrics are together.

Then I pinned the skirt to the raw edge of the bodice sticking out under the waistband.  I stretched the bodice slightly so they would fit together.

Then I sewed the bodice to the skirt, sewing below the basting stitch I used for making the gathers.  Now the ruffly raw edges are sticking out on the outside of the dress, and the inside is nice and smooth.

This is the Right side of the dress after attaching the skirt.  Yes, it's upside down--sorry! 

Next is trimming off the seam allowance where you attached the skirt and the bodice,then pressing what's left down.  Then fold the waistband down to cover the raw edges and topstitch it down.  Try to keep your gathers smooth as you do so.

The inside will have some flattened out gathers under the waistband, but no seam allowances making a ridge in there!

Finished inside

Both of the kids have been wanting to wear these pj's every night! And the matching pj's make me so happy.  I love sitting at the breakfast table bookended by these guys.  Wouldn't you?