Anyways, now that I've discussed hormones with you all (check that off the list)....I'm going to show you a quick quick little project that really comes in handy for extending the life of your little girl's clothes. I had intended to be showing you my new planters today, but life happens, and they are only half done. They are up next though!
I have done this several of times, with all types of dresses. Some kinds of dresses involve a little bit of sewing, but this was NO SEW. Easy peasy.
My girls have a few of these cheapo sun dresses that are shirred on top and then have ruffles on the bottom. I can't remember where we got this one from, but we've all seen them. This dress was a 3T. I have one little girl that is in a size 4/5 and another that is in a size 6. I made this one to fit my little girl who wears a size 6 (you know we love hand me downs).
The first thing I did was just cut of the top and left myself a few inches above the skirt to make a waist band with.
Because it is shirred (ruffled with stretchy thread), you can't sew a hem into it. If you did, it would no longer be stretchy. I guess you could sew it with the stretchy thread like you do when you shirr it....but that's too much to go through for this little project. I just turned it inside out and then cut closely along one of the little lines of shirring that you can see below.
All I did after that was add fray chek to it so it wouldn't fray.
At this point you have a skirt already....but in my situation, the shirring wasn't quite elasticy (is that a word) enough to really keep it on my daughter's hips....it would start to fall after a few minutes. My solution was to add some ribbon. I cut two long pieces of polka dot ribbon.
Here's where it gets ghetto. I told you, no sew and five minutes...I literally just safety pinned the ribbon to the side seams on the inside of the dress. Now, I will probably go back and sew those on at least, but I just didn't feel like getting out the sewing machine today....remember, grumpy mood today.... Now you could just take a needle and thread to it really quickly as well. You can use my mother-in-law's trick to make a fast fat knot that I posted about here.
Then I just cut two teensy tiny slits at about a third of the way over from each side on the front of the skirt. I mean TINY....you don't want to see the rough-ness of a hole in the front of the skirt. You want the pressure from the ribbon coming through the hole to make it look finished and keep it from fraying. Thread the ribbon through the tiny holes like so....
And then all you have to do is tie the bow to fit!
A super cute skirt!
She really got into the modeling thing.
Oh, and make sure you put the fray check on the ends of your ribbon too.
You can do this with most kinds of little girl's dresses. If it doesn't have a stretchy top, then usually I will cut it and hem it at the top. I will either add elastic under the hem or I will make a closure in the back with a button and an extra flap of fabric from the top of the dress that I cut off. It's just a really easy way to extend the life of your kid's clothes. They grow out of them so fast!
Have a great day everyone!
Xoxo
Anna
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This is really cool Anna. YOU are a creative genius.
ReplyDeleteThanks mom!
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