How many times has your little one had a cute shirt like this...
Or this...I mean, could the picture on this shirt BE any cuter?
But then they get a stain like this:
Or both a hole (top arrow) AND a stain (bottom arrow) like this:
There's plenty of wear left in both of these shirts, so I don't want to throw them away! What to do?With these helpful tools, a sewing machine, and a little bit of time, you can make the shirts a usuable part of your little girl's wardrobe again!
First you need to decide where to cut the shirt off at. In this case, I went slightly below the stain, which will end up in the seam allowance...
Using a rotary cutter and a clear ruler, I cut the shirt off. (Note, while you can use scissors, a rotary cutter makes a nice, clean cut REALLY fast!)
Since the stain was lower on this shirt, I just cut it off leaving enough space so that the embroidered design wouldn't be affected .
After the cut.
Now, why would I cut the shirts off? So I could make them into dresses!! For the green shirt, I chose this plaid flannel fabric, which coordinated pretty well. It was also on sale, so for the 1/2 yard I needed, I paid just $1.75.
I folded the fabric in half, matching the short edges. Using my sewing machine, I sewed a seam along the short edge of the fabric.
Then I pressed the seam open with my iron so it would lay flat.
Then I sewed a long running stitch along the top edge of the fabric. I set the sewing machine up to sew the longest, most loose stitch possible.
Holding one end of the thread, I gently pulled the other end of the thread tight to gather the material. I did this until the gathered area was approximately the same size as the cut edge of the shirt. Pinning RIGHT sides together, I pinned the cut edge of the shirt to the gathered edge of the skirt.
This is before sewing the bottom hem of the skirt.
The finished "new" dress!
The fabric I bought for the melon colored shirt was a little more fancy (and a little more expensive, but still on sale - I paid $2.50 for 1/2 yard). I think the fabric type is called Moleskin. Super soft and easy to work with. I decided to get a bit more sophisticated with this one, so I created pleats approximately every 2 inches along the top edge of the fabric. Then I ran a stitch along the top to keep the pleats in place while I continued working.
Here is a view of the "right" side of the fabric with the pleats pinned.
Since the Moleskin fabric is a little heavier and the pleats leave less room for sewing errors, I used a piece of twill tape to keep the cut edge of the shirt from getting stretched out. I sewed this on the "wrong" side of the fabric with a straight stitch.
Here is the shirt with the twill tape sewn in place.
At this point, my camera battery died, so I don't have any more "in progress" pictures. *sigh*
Anyway, after sewing on the twill tape, I pinned the pleated edge of the skirt to the cut edge of the shirt (RIGHT sides together) and sewed a seam. Then I folded the bottom of the skirt up once (approximately 1/2 inch) then again to create a 3/4" bottom hem.
Here's the finished dress.
You could use this idea as I did, to get more use out of a stained shirt, or to create a "new" dress for your little girl. The total cost for these two "new" dresses was $5.34. The shirts used for these projects were 4T. I used 1/2 yard of 45" wide fabric for each one, plus a little less than a yard of twill tape for the melon/brown one. Depending on the size of your child, you might need more or less fabric.
