Little Summer Dress

So this post is long long past due. I had a friend ask me a while ago to show a little on how to make dresses without using a pattern. The one I am going to show isn't nearly as elaborate as the the original dress she was referring to, but it is a basic simple dress to start out on how easy it can be to make clothes.

Before I begin explaining how I went about making this little dress, I will put in this little disclaimer- I am certainly not a pro to any great level at all this, and I certainly make lots and lots of mistakes with all sorts of clothes I make doing it this way. I love to make things without a pattern, mostly because patterns really confuse me and I don't want to waste the money on them, but on these similar notes, I still do make lots of mistakes with it all. So if you try this out on your own, don't expect perfection, but at the same note, you can still make some fun cute things, it just takes practice and trial and error.

Not to scare with all that, but just had to put that in there.

Here was a little blanket that my little girl got, it came with an outfit set, and even though the outfits fit her great, the blanket was way too small to do her any good. So I decided to use the material for it to make her a cute summer dress.

I like the style of this dress, so I used it as my base for the pattern

But I liked these sleeves, so I used these a basic pattern for the sleeves with the rest of the dress like the brown one above.

When I make anything without a pattern I always or most always use another clothing as a guide, in order to make my portions more accurate (most things I make without another clothing item as a guide, my proportions end up being WAY off, usually, and then it ends up being a waste of an outfit). Then I always try to find the shapes that are within the already made clothing, and then cut out those shapes that I see.

Elastic can be a little tricky because it can "hide" the shape that you are trying to create, but if you stretch it as far as it can go, that can give you a general idea of how big or long you should cut the item out like I did above. I also like to cut an extra inch or so to give me a good seam allowance and to give myself a little room for mistake. If you make something too big, you can always take it in, but if you make something too small, it is a lot harder to make up for it.

Here I cut out the sleeves, and then some elastic for the sizes and shapes that looked good enough for me.

Then I used the brown dress as a guide to cut out the following shapes, the front and back. Since the brown dress is almost a little small on my girl, I give myself a few more inches on each side so that it will be big enough for her now and maybe last another month or so

Here is all my pieces cut out and ready to go. Since I used material from an already made item, the blanket, I used the hemmed edges to my advantage and implemented them to the bottom of the dress and then took them out for the sleeves (I HATE hemming, so this was a very lovely advantage). Then I sewed all the pieces together. A nice rule of thumb that my Momma always taught me is always sew the right sides together, or facing each other, so that everything will turn out nicely (I haven't always remembered this rule and it sometimes leaves me ending up with half the outfit wrong side out and all mixed up, so long story short- right sides together!)

Here is the lovely finished product, what do you think?

It did turn up being a little bit too big, so it will probably last her more than just a few more months :-)

Here is a more flat and simple sort of view, if I were to try this again, I would have made the sleeves a little longer over the shoulder so she wouldn't have to wear a onesie underneath, but oh well, you win some, you loose some :-)

And then, as I have mentioned in other posts, I used some left over scrapes of the blanket to make the lovely matching flower.

So there we have it, there is a simple version of a dress I made without a pattern, I have made much more complex outfits, and over time I will try to show more varieties than just this simple dress, but here is a start. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a lovely rest of your Monday evening.

Until next time. . . .