Pillowcase Dress

See, if I'd started this blog when I first bought the machine, I wouldn't be making three posts at once.

I'll put up the pictures another time (just in this post - and then this line will disappear).

So I made the girl a pillowcase dress. I think it makes her look like Pebbles Flinstone, which isn't a bad thing when you're 19 months old. As linked above, I mostly followed Jen Leheny's instructions.

Except when I was finished, the arms were WAY too big. Granted, my dress doesn't not have tie straps - I wanted to fix them on - but the arms are so big I wouldn't even need straps. I could just attach the neck opening front to back and it would be fine, but then there wouldn't be room to grow. She could wear this thing for years to come. I could almost where it. I said almost. Instead, I've got the straps pinned for now. They look nice, I think, but the whole dress needs a few more doo-dads to make it extra cute. I've got some little red ribbons somewhere leftover from a Christmas project. Might put those on somehow.

Materials? 95% recycled. I used 13 inches of elastic. Everything else I already had, including the thread (not recycled, but I didn't have to buy it. The dress was an old pillowcase. The straps are from a pair of pants and a coordinating skirt that came with a strap to tie at the waist. The straps always got in the way of the carseat buckles and were a pain to tie, so off they came. Since it was so long, the straps are very short and I had a lot of leftovers. I used them to trim the bottom of the dress and cover up some worn holes I hadn't noticed before.

Final comment on the instructions - I could not for the life of my figure out how to fold and sew an arm casing. Instead, I managed to figure out a rolled hem on my sewing machine. How smart am I?