Easy tshirt dress

Hi everyone! This is my first post so hopefully this is relatively painless! I don't know how many of you have little girls, or know little girls to sew for, but this is a pretty easy project using a tshirt that I found on the clearance rack at Walmart for a dollar. I think I bought 6 shirts and 4 little yoga pants, but I have a problem! So here goes. You will need: a tshirt in the appropriate size for the one you are sewing for, about 1/4 yard of material, more or less depending on who you are sewing for, how long you want your skirt, and how full you want you skirt to be. For my daughter who is 8 months old, and in size 12 month clothing I used about 1/4 yard. So first, decide how much of your shirt you want to show. Now add about 1/4 inch for a seam allowance and cut off the rest. Take that section and cut apart at one side to make one long piece. Now you can use that piece as a guide for how wide to cut your skirt material. I used about double the width of the shirt After you get your material cut, cut it again into two pieces. You can leave it as one piece, but this way the seams will match up and you have a guide for your gathers. Now put your right sides together and pin. I also stuck a pin about two inches down on the front and the back to use as guides for the gathers later. Make a seam down either side where you have pinned and press your seams open. With me still? Now on to the gathering of the skirt. A gather is not my favorite thing in the world to do, but it is oh so cute and a good thing to learn, so let's dive right in. Make your gathering stitch about 1/4 inch from the top of your skirt. You can do this by hand or machine. I did mine by machine. I just adjust the thread tension as loose as it will go and it does the work for me, but every machine is different. Leave the threads long at the end so you can adjust your gathers and if you do it by machine do not backstitch. Now you want to pin the right side of the shirt to the right side of the skirt. Now is the time to adjust your gathers to the size of your shirt. Make sure the side seams are lined up and go from there and pin as you go. Make a seam all the way around, under your gathering. You are almost done! Now just make a narrow hem at the bottom of your dress and can stop here if you want. I added an applique to mine, but you could do a trim at the bottom, or a ruffle, or a bow, or, or, or.....The possibilities are endless! Happy sewing! Here is a picture of my little girl in her dress! I made her a matching bow because I'm cool like that! Pin It