two (easy) dresses!

My friend JayeCee got me in the sewing mood when a couple weeks back I told her I'd teach her how to sew. She bought a sewing machine, some fabric and I helped her cut out pattern pieces to make her 2 girls each a dress. I sent her home thinking I'd come over and walk her through the process step by step. Four days later, she calls me and says the first dress is DONE and she's coming over to show me! It turned out so adorable and I couldn't be a prouder teacher! Ok, I really did nothing other than help her cut out her pieces. She is the best sewing student there ever was! But then, get this. A few days after that, she finished the second dress and that, too was adorable and she is awesome! And so I thought I need to stop being bummed that I never have time to sew and just crank out something, anything! JayeCee did it and I could too.

I got in my fabric stash and found this fun black and white paisley fabric that my sister Trina sent me last summer. It came with the stretchy shirring at the top already and we thought it would make a good pregnant dress for me to wear to our little brother's wedding. Then she ended up finding another dress that I actually wore instead. Well, I put that cute fabric to good use and made 2 dresses from it- one for Preslie and one for Quinn! I think I got Trina's money's worth!

Since it already had the shirred top, all I had to do was hold it around Preslie to measure it, pin in place, sew it into a tube, hem the bottom, then add straps!

I had to do a little more for Quinn's dress because she is so much smaller and the shirring was too tall. I cut part of the shirring off and picked out another row of it to make room for a hem on the top of the dress. Then I cut off the bottom to my desired length and hemmed. I made thin straps with the remainder off the length that I cut off and voila! Cute and simple.
I call it the mini maxi dress!

Both dresses took me 3 days of just working on them a few minutes here and there. This kind of fabric with the stretchy stuff already done for me was a great way to go. Anyone who can sew a straight line can make a dress like this! And yay for matching dresses for my girls. There is no way I'd be able to find matching dresses at the store in girls' size 12 and baby size 12 months. And no way I'd be able to beat the price: FREE (Thanks, Trina!)