Adult dress to adorable little girls dress

After

Before

She is so ridiculously adorable right!! My Sweet little mischievous 4 year old is growing way too fast. She literally has like 5 things that fit. The problem is first of all she will only wear dresses. And 2nd of all she is in the same size as her 7 year old sister. It should be perfect right? They should just wear each others clothes no problem?? Wrong. This little cutie is very particular on her clothing. it has to be a dress and it has to be comfortable otherwise she refuses to wear it and sometimes it's not worth a fight.  So, when I found this very 90's sweater dress at the thrift store light bulbs went off and a refashion idea (or 3) was born!  So the dress was a size Large in ladies which is great because when you are doing a refashion the larger the better. 

 I started out by finding a dress that we already had that I could use as a pattern. I wanted to use the same bottom of the dress because I liked how it had a larger stripe on the bottom. So I simply layered it like the picture on the left.  I wanted to make it a little longer then the dress I used for a pattern, so I left some extra fabric along the bottom.


 I folded the sleeves in to show the seams along the body of the dress and simply cut along it. I added about an inch extra on either side for seam allowance and to make sure it would fit for a while. I also wanted to leave a little extra just in case the knit started to come undone before I could sew it.

Then, flip your new pieces inside out and pin along both sides. Sew or serge all the way up making sure you stop at the armpit so that you will be able to add sleeves later.

 Next, lay the sleeve you cut out, over the sleeve pattern you are wanting to use and cut it out.  If the dress you are refashioning doesn't have sleeves you can use the fabric you cut off or make it sleeveless. Be creative!  In this case I chose not to make the sleeves thinner. I know how my girl likes it and she doesn't like the sleeves too tight. So I decided to go with comfort. All I did was cut off some of the length.

Next pin the sleeves to the dress and sew or serge them on.




Once you have sewn up the sides and attached the sleeves the dress should end up like the picture below. 



Fold over the top of the neck, back and sleeves about and inch and pin all the way around.  Sew all the way around leaving a small opening and add some thin elastic. I just add the elastic and watch it getting smaller and eyeball it.  Once you get the size you would like cut the elastic and sew the 2 ends together. Then sew your hole closed that you used to put the elastic in and your done. 

I did tie a ribbon around the waist to break it up a little.

It turned out so adorable! And she loves it which is always a bonus :) Don't throw out all the scraps. In my next post I will show you the fun stuff that I made for myself out of the scraps! Love it!!