Little Red Dress

I have become obsessed with Pinterest. HA!
I just love all the great ideas out there! There are some very talented people in this world and I am thankful to many of them for sharing their creativity with the world.

I found a tutorial for an old sweater turned into a dress, through Pinterest,  at this website by Ashley: www.makeit-loveit.com so yes, the credits for the idea goes to her! I believe she did an awesome job of explaining the how-to. Please visit her site! I'm sure she will appreciate it!

I mixed two of her tutorials (long and short sleeves) and came up with my project. It is a little dress for my baby girl, Amelia. Hopefully she will be big enough at Christmas time to wear it :)

I apologize I did not take all the pictures. I realized afterwards that I would want to blog about it. Hopefully these pictures (and your looking back at Ashley's blog) will be enough guidance. :)

so first, find an old sweater. Maybe at a thrift store, or an old one that you  already have. Then  maybe using  a dress that you already have, measure the size. I did not follow that advice and just guessed at the measurements. You can tell by the end result :P When cutting, always leave at least 1 to 3 inches for the seams. It is always better to have more and the cut back down than to cut it to short/tight.

On the original blog, she uses just the cuffs of the sleeves. I decided I wanted it to be long sleeves. So I used more fabric and just cut it a little so it would be kids size. Make sure the shoulder area is diagonal. Otherwise if it's too square it may look like a box. 

Sew it together...right sides facing each other.

Now, this part is better explained at Ashley's site. Basically, use some elastic (Or cut a string from an old t-shirt  like I did! it stretches a little) and folding the rim outward, towards the right side, sew the elastic in. It will give a ruffle effect to the neck. You can adjust the width of the opening. In my case, since I did not use elastic, I had to adjust it so that it would be open enough for her head, but narrow enough to cover her shoulders and be a modest dress for a 5 month old! :P Using elastic will give you more freedom and will look prettier, but I didn't have any handy, and was too inpatient to wait  to get one! I really wanted to make the dress. 

And....tadah! Amelia couldn't care less! haha

Like I said, the shape is not perfect, but I love it. It was made with love and hey! She will grow out of it before i know it, so why stress about it!! haha...

For the bow, use two strings of fabric: one of 7x3 and one of 3x1/2inch. Or whatever dimensions work best for you :)

Happy Sewing!!