tutorial: dress made from a skirt

here's a tutorial on how to make a romantic inspired dress out of a woman's skirt.

what you will need:

one woman's size skirt. (large with a zipper is most recommended.)

this skirt having a zipper in the back made fitting this much easier. so i suggest you get a skirt with a zipper.

first i took the skirt (inside out) and placed it on my daughter. making sure the top was right under her arm pits. i pinned in (taking from both sides) under her arms where it would fit snug enough but not too snug. unzip and and take off the skirt.

i eyeballed it but if you want to measure, measure about 1/2 in out of where you are going to sew your seam

before i cut half inch seam allowance i placed pins all the way down the skirt where i was going to sew my seam. (i sort of did an A-line so that the dress would be fuller at the bottom.

the tube of your dress is now done.

since you cut off from the sides of your skirt you will have two strips left over. mine were a little on the skinny side so i figured out that my sleeve had to be at least 7 inches in width to make a little bit of a cap sleeve. (and yes i totally misspelled sleeve in the picture!) i then put on the dress tube on my daughter again and measured from the front to the back how much i needed in length. hers was 7 inches to make it over the shoulder so i added one inch and that way i had 1/2 inch to drop down past the top to sew it together. at this point i put a little pin marking where the middle of the sleeve would go on either side of the tube dress.

with wrong sides together sew down the two sides

once your two sides are sewn sew a diagonal curve and this will give you a more rounded look.

(error in the picture is says three sides but the third side is your fold)

turn inside out and top stitch around the three sides (you will have the last side still with raw edges)

once that is top stitched, fold over your raw edge a small amount and press with the iron, fold over one more time and then top stitch on top of your two folds.

remember the pin you put on to tell you where the middle of the strap would be? pin on your sleeve where the pin marks you to. make sure your rounded edge faces out away from the zipper. and make sure you do not sew in your rounded edge.
sew close to the edge of your top.

this is what the back should look like.

and now you have a perfectly cute dress for your little one!
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