T-shirt Dress

I found some bright and colorful t-shirts at the dollar store, and knew that my girls would be wearing t-shirt dresses for Easter.

I've been using the t-shirt pattern I made for the pajamas a lot. (Click here to see how that works.)

So after tracing the pattern on the t-shirt, I angled it from the arms eye to the bottom. ( I actually didn't take the line all the way to the bottom at first and there was an interesting bump where I ended my seam, so I went back and took it all the way down.)

That way, I kept the original hem, neckline and shoulder seam. (I still haven't mastered how to sew those things on knits without stretching them.)

I cut the sleeves to a much shorter length by measuring two inches from the original line.

Then I fit the sleeves into the arm's eye, right sides together.

As you can see, the sleeve was much too wide, so I sewed my widest stitch possible from three inches above the armpit seam around to three inches above it on the other side, leaving a lot of extra thread on both sides to pull when I gathered it.

With the bottom and top of the sleeve pinned in place, I pulled the thread on each side until the sleeve fit the hole.

Then I sewed the sleeve in place.

Came out looking like this.

I'm still not completely happy with my pattern.  It feels like the arm holes are too wide still.  I'll have to tweak it some more.






Xena is much smaller than Kewpie, and when I tried the initial t-shirt on her, I knew I'd have to do much more with the neck to make it seem less like it drowned her.

I took a seam ripper and cut along the inside of the neck ribbing.


Then I folded it over further and sewed it down, trimming the excess ribbing off after I sewed it.


If I hadn't been so lazy, I would have switched to matching thread, and it would have looked better.

Xena immediately got dirt all over her dress, before I could even get a picture of her.


I should have taken one anyway, but my mother-in-law did, and someday I'll get those photos from her and update this.

Kewpie loves this dress most of all, because it's the same color as her best friend, Duck.  

She even insisted that we take pictures of it, posed for me very cooperatively.  Note to self, if you make clothes they like, they'll let you take pictures of them.

The first dress took about 30 minutes to make.  I love me a quick project that turns out cute!