Hello sunshine dress (made from a skirt)

May 22, 2015

Hello sunshine dress (made from a skirt)

I had a skirt that I did not wear very often. I felt a bit too mature (not to say old!) to wear it. I did not like the applique, it seemed too colorful to me ... The whole skirt was too colorful... Well, it was a skirt by Smash... :-)

For the same reasons why I did not like it, my daughter did :-D (especially the color).
Well, why not to transform it for her then?!

I did not want to cut it shorter as I wanted to keep the ruffles so I decided to stitch it to a tee to make a dress. So we have looked together at her tees and have chosen this one:

That´s how I proceeded:

1/ I cut the collar, made the bias made from the scrap and finished the neckline.

2/ I cut the elastic that was in the waist of the skirt and removed the applique. As the skirt was much larger then the tee, I cut a strip of the skirt on one of the sides and stitched it.

3/ Then I sewed the bodice (the tee) and the skirt together. It could be finished at that stage but I really wanted some embellishment on it...

4/ I made the reverse applique on the chest.
Well, here´s little explanation of the method of the reverse applique:

Draw the silhouette of your applique on the right side of the tee.

Pin the scraps of the contrasting fabric to your tee (right side of the scrap to the wrong side of the tee).
Then stitch the two layers together following your drawing. Use the short straight stitch.

Cut the inside of your drawing. And that´s it! When working with jersey, you do not need to finish it, you just cut. Easy-peasy!

5/ I made two strips of the violet fabric that I stitched to the end of the sleeves. I also found two nice buttons in the color of the tee :-)

6/ As you can see on the following picture, I made a change... I just planned to "write" HELLO SUNSHINE on the tee. As I was cutting the "N" from the yellow fabric, I went too close to the stitching line and I cut it! It was too late; the tee was already cut... So I made a little change to save the project. I made a little "window" with sun in it. Sun is from the yellow fabric and the rays are embroidered using the golden threat. Finally it´s not so bad, it goes well with the detail on the sleeves as well.

That´s it! Do you like it? Looking forward to read your comments :-)