$1.80 Polka Dot Dress Refashion

I found this woman's shirt on clearance at Kohl's last summer for $1.80, yes, you read that right, $1.80. Even though there was no way I could ever wear this shirt, I am just to old and not skinny enough, I knew I could refashion it into a dress for my daughter and who can pass up a dress for $1.80, not me that is for sure.

This was a fairly straight forward refashion and could really be done with any t-shirt you have, First off, this shirt had a shelf bra sewn in which my daughter didn't need so I cut that out. Then I marked along the side seams where I wanted to take in the dress a little. After cutting along the line, I pinned the sides together and sewed up the seams.

Then I cut along off the scooped neck and straps creating a straight edge at the top. Fold over a 1/4 inch and sewn creating a finished edge.

After sewing the finished edge, I noticed that the fabric had stretched slightly and just didn't look right so I decided to shir the top edge of the dress a little bit to match the existing shirring below. You could put in as much shirring as you want, I only did 2 rows.

For the sleeves, I had wanted to reuse the spaghetti straps that were originally on the dress however I am not  a huge fan of little girls in spaghetti straps, it just looks to grown up to me and when pinned in place it just didn't grab me so I decided to make a little ruffle sleeve using the fabric from shelf bra I had cut out of the top. The ruffle sleeve was cut out in a half circle, making sure to cut it larger than I needed because the shirring along the sleeve will bunch up making it a smaller. I shirred 2 rows along the flat edge of the sleeve and then pinned these sleeves to the top of the dress with the curved edges facing out.

At this point the construction of the dress was done, you could leave it this way and the dress would be cute. I however couldn't leave well enough alone and decided I needed to spruce it up. Out came my favorite crafting tool, the Silhouette craft cutter and some heat set vinyl. You could really do anything to spruce it up, I thought flowers along the bottom would be cute, but in the end polka dots won out, I just love them.

I wasn't able to get my daughter to model it for me, she was asleep but I bet a million dollars she asks if she can wear it to school tomorrow. Fine by me sweetheart, fine by me.

Please feel free to link to my posts but please do not repost pictures of my children, thank you.

Mickey Bows

We are hanging out with the mouse this week, "Mickey Mouse" that is. We totally surprised our kids with the trip, they had no idea we were going until we picked them up from school yesterday to go to the airport, so much fun. I however had so much to do to get ready which included making a few Mickey Mouse themed items which I will feature over the next week. First up "Mickey Bows" to find out the general directions visit this post from last week. The only thing I did different was to use a red button in the center which makes the corkscrew ribbon fan out a little more. I attached them to the barrette form the exact same way as in the directions. One great tip to get your "em-agination" flowing is to use a sticker inside of the button to achieve a specific theme. The button I used was a plain old cheap button but to give it a little more flair and a true "Mickey" theme, I put a Mickey sticker right in the center of the button and used a little modge podge to hold it in place. "Em-agine" the possibilities you could come up with, flowers, animals, cartoon characters, if you can find a sticker, you can make a what-ever themed bow.