Tee Shirt to Dress

Child's tee shirt to dress.  I think we have all seen the tee shirt conversion going around and I've been trying my hand at many of them.  It has been alot more fun to try one of these for my daughter, kids clothes are just more fun.

The dilemma was to take a slightly over-sized child's tee and convert it into a dress for my daughter. The challenge was to not purchase any additional material and to accomplish this quickly.

The starting point was a child's L tee for my daughters annual school dance performance.

Phase one involved using another dress as a template for size.

I turned the shirt inside out, folded it in half and chalked the outline with an extra inch for seam allowance.

 

The finished cutout looked like this and just needed to be sewn up each side.  I also removed the collar at this point as well as the sleeves.

We tried it on for fit and it was too short but the shape was snug without being too tight.

To lengthen the dress I opted to take the bottom 4 inches from an adult XL shirt in my "to be used for scraps and projects pile".  I choose a lime green to accent the same color around the shell.  I was a little concerned how these colors might work together.

I pinned the bottom inside the inside out dress.  To get it even I folded the lime green band in half and pinned this to each side of the dress.  I then pinned the half way point of each side of the green band before folding over into a slightly pleated bottom skirt.  For a fully pleated skirt you could take 2 strips 4in wide and sew them together and do the same thing.

The finished bottom skirt.  Because the tee shirt material rolls slightly and creates what looks like a hem line I opted not to hem, although if I wanted to spend more time using a serger on the edge would be a nice effect.

We tried on this incarnation of dress for fit and length.  I was initially going to sew the arms holes with a small seam as well as the neckline but after a few minutes I decided that the color balance didnt look very finished.

I removed a 2in bit of fabric from the green shirt to edge the collar and pinned it in place before sewing it down as well as sewing the arms in.  It did require two darts as the added fabric in the collar stuck out in a way my daughter didnt like.

The finished product!  One happy 8 year old and the best part?  The whole project took me 45 minutes, not counting the 30 minutes I spent adjusting the tension on my sewing machine after the 4year old discovered that it had nifty buttons and "helpful" adjusted it. 

I have a rather large pile of old tee shirts which are being recycled into new things.  I've decided this was easy enough that I might make a few others maybe trying different necklines and skirt pleating styles.