Although I haven’t shown any sewing for a while doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any going on. With grandchildren learning at home my time for sewing has been reduced but after I finished the year quilt, I sewed a quilt top. I don’t have any pictures of the completed top and I am not at home to take one but here is a photo of the quilt in progress. All the fabric used is leftovers but I will have to purchase some fabric for the backing.
Now for my favourite to date sew. My granddaughter is supposed to wear a school t-shirt on Fridays but she is a dress girl and did not like having to do that. I said I could turn it into a dress if she wanted. That never happened but she didn’t forget what I had said. We were going through my fabric to see what she liked and there was a piece of fabric that she had chosen that had not been used.
The next thing I know Dad and granddaughter give me this so I can turn it into a dress with the fabric. The size was fine for wearing as a t-shirt but not as a dress if you want to showcase the unicorn and the fabric. I debated getting the same t-shirt in a smaller size and if this wasn’t the time of COVID I would have done.
The body of the t-shirt needed to be shorter, so that meant cutting top and bottom and the width of the shirt needed to be reduced. These cuts also meant I had to adjust the armholes. First I made a paper template from the t-shirt of the sleeves and neckline then I cut the bottom of the t-shirt to just under the design. I cut closer to the design than I had intended despite working out seam allowances etc. Next the sleeves were cut off and the neck re-cut and bound. The pink fabric for the binding was a stretch fabric I had been given and kept even though I didn’t know what I would use it for. (It has been the lining in at least one bag.) And then came danger! Not only did I use my serger to sew the side seams. I had the blade in place to cut as I sewed. Sleeves were bound and the top was finished.
The skirt was simple. Two pieces of fabric seamed, hemmed and gathered. But how to join to the top? For some reason I did not want to join cotton fabric directly to the t-shirt and I did not want exposed seams. Once again the pink material came in handy. I cut four pieces the width of the shirt plus seam allowances and made two circles. The skirt pieces were gathered to fit the circle and placed between the two pieces. Then I sewed the right side of the top to the right side of the band. On the inside I was going to hand sew the band to the inside to enclose all the raw edges. But I did not feel like doing that and wondered how well it would stand up in all the machine washing. In the end I zigzagged from the right side and that worked well.
What have I learnt from this? I can make things without a commercial pattern. It might have been easier to have purchased a pattern to use for the top part of the dress. Don’t cut the neck opening as wide. Cut the waistband wider so that it is easier to cover the raw seams.
Having finished it I was still worried that my granddaughter wouldn’t like it. After all I didn’t know what she was envisioning and the t-shirt part was now quite different.
But she loved it and had to wear it every day.
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