I got the "tie dye" fabric that I used for the bottom part of this dress a few months ago, to top off a Fabric.com order so that I could get free shipping. I didn't even really know what I would use it for, but, well, it was cheap. And Fabric.com accidentally sent me two yards instead of one, and when I pointed this out to them, they said that I could keep the extra yard. (I highly recommend Fabric.com. Their customer service is excellent!) So, I have a lot of it...
Littles has been begging me to make a dress for her out of it since the moment she first saw it. She found it once again in my pile of fabric over the weekend, and begged me again. This time, with my experience making her tutu shirt fresh in my mind, I decided to tackle the project.
Believe it or not, the top part of the dress is one of my shirts. Ummm, no, it's not from my childhood... it's from my single-woman days :) In my defense, I did have to modify it so that it would fit Littles. I wasn't wearing a shirt small enough to fit a 4-year-old :) But yeah, it's a little too tight/skimpy for my current tastes, so it's been sitting in the back of my closet for years. Just waiting to be given a new life!
Here is what it looked like originally:
I altered it by 1) cutting off the spaghetti straps and serging the ends together, 2) making the body of the shirt narrower by re-serging both sides, and 3) cutting a few inches off the bottom.
Then I cut the "tie dye" fabric to the appropriate length. It's not really tie dyed; it's a printed 100% polyester knit. Anyway, the tutorials I found suggested making the fabric about 2.5 to 3 times as wide as the shirt you're attaching it to. The fabric was 60" wide, so that was just about perfect for this shirt, which was about 22" at the waist after my modifications.
I serged the top of the fabric using a 2x differential on my serger, which gathered it slightly, and then I was able to pull the threads to gather it even more. I like this method of gathering much more than doing a basting stitch on my sewing machine. It's a little harder to gather, but it feels more secure. It's also at the very top of the fabric (since the serger cuts off any excess) so it's easier to hide with the seam attaching the top of the fabric to the waist of the shirt.
Once I had the fabric gathered, I serged the two ends together to form a "tube." Then I serged the gathered edge of the tube onto the bottom of the shirt. I used my experience with the tutu shirt to sew this one on right! Shirt right side out, skirt "tube" inside out, right sides together.
Finally, I finished the hem with a rolled-edge stitch on my serger. This made for a nice, lightweight hem that allows the dress to "splat out" (as Littles calls it) when she twirls. An important feature for any dress!
So, this was my first major project completed entirely using my new serger! It could definitely be done on a regular sewing machine, especially with knit fabric like I used, since it doesn't fray, so finishing the seams is less important. But serging gave me a nice professional finish on all the seams. I'm still getting used to my serger and definitely spent some time cussing at it during the completion of this dress :) But I really love the results!
And so does Littles:
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