Improvising Dresses

I like to hit sales at the end of a season to snag deals on clothes that my daughter can use the next season or year.  Size up on spring items to use in the fall and the such.  At the end of last summer JCPenney was having a great clearance and I had a $10 off $10 purchase coupon so it was like they were giving me clothes.  What's not to like?  So I thought that since G-Tot was in size 18 months the end of last summer, that a 3T would be safe for spring tunic tops.  Um, wrong Mom.  They were cute little t-shirt tops but the length of a tunic top was lost on my string-bean of a daughter, and I had plenty of other spring T's for her.

So I took the three tops and matched them with three adult size T-shirts.  The green one was from my closet, the other two were from a 4 for $10 deal at our local craft store.



From this point I was completely neglectful in taking pictures of the process, but here's the basics.  I cut about a 5 inch strip from the bottom of each of the adult t-shirts.  Then took the large tubes of fabric, gathered them up and sewed them to the bottom of the tunic tops using a twin needle on my sewing machine.  This lengthened the tops and gave them a "skirt" effect.



I had elastic left over from the Trash Me Pants project and the blue and red shirts were large enough that I was also able to cut shorts out of the side seams.  So I made matching shorts to go under two of the dresses.  I  used a  method similar to the one that I used on the Trash Me Pants, except that I did have to hem the cuffs.

The lesson I learned the hard way with this project is that you cannot sew over pins in your project with a double needle like you do with a single needle.  I only learned this after breaking two of my twin needles.

So at the end of this project, with items I had on hand, and less than $10 of purchased materials (including the replacement needle) I ended up with three dresses for my daughter.  That works for me!

This post is linked up at Works For Me Wednesday.