Shirt dresses

My love for repurposing started when I stumbled upon a Flickr group, you MADE it, which is full of lovely crafts by followers of the MADE blog. What an inspiration pool! A new world opened up to me and I dusted my old, very basic sewing machine and got to work.

Since I like clothes and love shopping, I have loads of clothes that I do not use or that do not fit me anymore (or have never fitted - so sad...). The material was available and it did not matter whether my creations actually were usable or not, since the materials were free. Now I am actually in a bit of a trouble, since I have difficulties throwing ANYTHING away, since I see potential in every piece of clothing.

Here is something I made last summer to my four-year-old daughter Emma using instructions on MADE, a shirt dress.

 

The summer was very warm here in Finland and the shirt dress was used a lot. It actually became one of my favourites and I really would have liked a similar one!

Since the original shirt was so boring, I just added some ruffles to the front. It seems that at least in this picture the ruffles are not evenly placed, but I think I corrected that already back then :)

After succesfully following Dana's really clear instructions, I wanted to make another one. I used my mother-in-law's shirt to create this:

I used a hair band as a belt and you can just barely see it in the picture. Even though it is almost impossible to see it, the fabric has some sparkly paillettes (Is that the correct word?)  sequins sewn into it, so my daughter liked this one more than the blue dress with ruffles :)

Oh, one more thing. I just couldn't resist posting another photo of my daughter in that white shirt dress. Isn't she lovely? My sweet girl...