A New Dress

So remember back over the summer when I was doing that whole sewing thing? Well back when I was really down the rabbit hole of looking up simple patterns online I found this fun tutorial for turning a men's shirt into a toddler dress:

It took me until now to do it but I'm so glad I did. Here's the before:

Crappy cell phone pic b/c there was no way I was going to go and retrieve my camera once I had both creatures corralled in my studio and distracted with something else.

And the After:

Mom told me to pose. Someday I will give Benny Ninja a run for his money.

It came out much smaller than the pattern b/c I used a small shirt. I just didn't have that much fabric to work with.

I drafted out the pattern specs in CAD (of course I did) and then busted out the good old sharpie and trace paper to alter it to fit within the fabric I had. Honestly it felt good to be drawing something again... even if it was just a silly little dress for my silly little girl:

cheese!

 

I like drawing, too, MOM.

It's a bit disproportional... the sleeves are a bit too poufy for the bottom. But I think that's because I cut the bottom off before the dress really flared out. I wanted the amount of space above the yellow band to match the amount below it. I'm OCD like that. I think next time I'll make the pattern flair quicker to avoid this issue.

Oooh do I get another one of these? Because I'm super cute in this

Although next time could you make it a bit longer?

Overall, though I really like how it came out.

And while I don't usually discuss cost of project because not many people would understand why it makes perfect sense to spend $30 and many hours on a pair of socks ....I can't not mention it here...

I got this shirt for a quarter.

Yes. A whopping $.25. And the yellow fabric? I stole out of a bag of scraps my mom was going to throw away. So including the elastic (which honestly I think I stole from my Grandma at one point) and the tread I think I'm at less than $1 for this whole project. One. Dollar. Math like that makes me want to sew alot more!

I have one more shirt to try this pattern on. It's flannel so I think I'm going to try to keep the long sleeves and use the existing cuffs. This might be a horrible plan. I'll let you know.