Making a Toddler's Dress out of Larger Dress!

For this project I started with a complete dress.  I got this dress from a friend of mine's daughter, who no longer wanted it.  It is obviously way too big for a 2-year-old, and way too small for me so I decided (surprise, surprise) to make a dress for Eleanor out of it.  To start, I cut off the part of the dress I knew I wanted to keep, which was the pretty ruffles at the bottom.  You can see my cut in this picture.  Next I gathered the top of this piece to form a skirt for the new dress that I was at this point sort of making up as I went along :-)

Once I gathered the waistline by sewing a long stitch through the top and then pulling it, I decided to make a bodice using some of the leftover lining of the dress.  Making the bodice to a little girl's sundress is pretty simple once you figure out the gist of it.  The shape above pretty much sums it up.  I cut my bodice as one large piece, but I added dotted lines to show where to make the seams if you want to make it using three pieces.  I cut out two of these shapes, sewed them together and flipped them right side out and bingo-bango, you have a bodice.

I sewed the bodice to the top of the gathered skirt and from here I was pretty much done.  Next was deciding how to make the straps and close up the back.  I decided to use the ribbon that was originally on the dress as a tie in the back to make some straps, and instead of a button in the back to close it, I decided to punch in some eyelets and tie it.  This seemed easier at the time!  I recommend a pair of eyelet pliers to anyone who is routinely crafty :-)


So here is the finished dress on my baby girl.