Sweet Little Polka-Dot Dress

Again inspired to make more variations of the same dress pattern, and driven by the fact that the Little Miss outgrew her only red dress before the summer even got started—and waay before the Fourth of July, I created a little dress.  I based the design off of this dress, but didn’t make it out of a knit.

Let’s also discuss how much fun I’ve had shirring with elastic thread in the bobbin!  It’s all I can do to not shirr everything.  

Mom Shirt to Kid Dress Refashion

So I had this shirt which, being from Old Navy, lasted almost an entire season.  In fairness, I was nursing a newborn when I wore it, so it got a lot more wear and tear than a shirt belonging to a non-nursing person, who doesn’t stretch shirts out as much.  Anyway, it’s made of a lightweight knit fabric. Besides being stretched out, though, the part near the stomach got several small holes in it:

But I liked the fun pattern and soft fabric, and have been inspired by refashions like this and remaking this dress pattern, so I used the basic idea of this dress and made a dress for The Peanut: The front of the dress is the back of the shirt (which, lacking a V-neck, had more material—and no holes).  I made it as long as the fabric allowed and shirred the bodice part.  The back of the dress is actually made from the two sleeves, seamed down the middle of the back and then shirred as well.  I had the front of the shirt left (minus the section with the holes), so I made the ruffle for the bottom (and to add length), and also made the straps.

Here it is in a rare moment of my model cooperating:

And one of her favorite things is how springy it is when she jumps:

Cover the Boppy

Since I had a lot of fabric left that matched Little Miss’s nursery, I decided to try to make a cover for the Bobby that resides in her room.  I found a tutorial/pattern and printed it out.  Before I finished cutting out the pieces to tape together, I got bored, so I decided to fetch an existing Boppy cover to see if I could just make a pattern off of that.  I could, and I did. 

 

I’m not so good at sewing curved items yet…and I imagined that I centered the zipper, but once I turned the cover right-side-out, it was clear that I did not.

Denim Bloomers

I needed to get some jean shorts for the Little Miss, but then there was some car trouble that required fixin’, and I was suddenly on a “spending freeze.”  I remembered that I had some lightweight, stretchy denim left over from making jeans for Bitty Baby, so I decided to try to make some bloomers.  I used the basic tutorial found here, and smocked the leg openings (which was as easy as the tutorial promisedso much fun!).  I didn’t have a bloomer pattern, so I freehanded one based on this picture and sized similarly to an existing pair of her shorts.

 

They turned out as well as can be expected, and I added some fun detailing of faux pockets and side seams.