Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Simple knit toddler dress

I've really gotten over my fear of working with knits lately. Last weekend I found this soft pink poly/cotton blend in the remnant bin at the fabric store, and made this dress for my 3-year-old:


Sorry the picture doesn't show the dress on my child, she is cute but moves too fast to be an ideal model. So far!

Really simple, the remnant was 54" wide and a little over .6 yards, I figured out that with 3/4 yard I could make dresses for all kinds of kids. Here's all I did:

1) Cut 3" off one end for the dress straps - in the direction so they wouldn't stretch too much. Made tubes out of them that turned inside-out and there ya go, straps.

2) Made the top section, 7" wide (I would fold it in half lengthwise to make the top) and long enough to wrap around my kid's top - about 22" is good for a size 3-4T.

3) Used my skirt pattern calculator to figure out the bottom part. For the "waist", I put in the kiddo's hip measurement. 16" length would hit about knee-level. For the width I just played with it until the "full pattern width" was as wide as the fabric I had, when I folded it in half (that calculator makes you a skirt that you have to cut two pieces of).

4) I sewed the top part in a tube and folded it lengthwise. Sewed the straps to the top. Sewed the two sides of the skirt together.

5) Then when I attached the skirt to the top I just stretched the top to fit around the skirt so the thread would have enough stretch to go on and off.

If I were to do it again I'd put the straps a little closer together, when laid down they're about 1.5" from the sides, need to be 2 or 2.5". But the skirt/top combo worked out awesome. And this whole getup was like $3, so that's a win for me!

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