Rainbow Toddler Dress from 6X Skirt (AKA My Official Return to Blogland)

This is just a teaser to hook you in! And so the pretty "after" picture will show up on the blogroll. 

I'm back from the pit of despair (aka final weeks of grad school plus the several days following)! And it feels oh so good. Seriously, y'all, I have not seen myself for about a month. Which makes it follow naturally that you all haven't seen me either. It took me about five days of straight sleeping and journaling and Huluing to finally find myself again. But, I knew I was back when I actually *wanted* to sew something (and wanted to blog about it, too). I hadn't had that feeling since...well, since whenever the last time was I posted on here, like WEEKS ago. 

So anyway...more on graduation yadda yadda at some later date. I definitely have a lot of thoughts and reflections on this HUGE transition in my life, but I think I need to ease back into this blogging thing with a good old fashioned sewing project. For now, here's my inaugural I-have-a-master's-degree project. (Though, I will say the skill level involved is significantly beneath master's-level. Pretty sure I could have made this in my sixth grade home ec class, the first time I ever touched a sewing machine. Stitch, backstitch, repeat. ANYWAYS.)

So, more on this later as well, but I'm planning a fantastically rainbowy party for Annabel's third birthday, coming up in June. If you're impatient, here's a sneak peak at my Pinterest inspiration board (click on it to take you to the actual page):

Around the time I decided to do a rainbow-themed party for her, Nate came home from a solo-garage-saling adventure proudly glowing about a "special present" he picked out all on his own just for Annabel. It was this adorably rainbowy skirt:

Cute, right? He was so pleased with himself. There was just one problem (the kind a Daddy doesn't notice):

 This adorably rainbowy skirt was the perfect size for Annabel...in approximately three years.

But it took me about 8 seconds to think to myself, "I could easily make this into an awesome twirly dress." I imagined taking in the sides a bit and adding some straps. Simple. Time to bust out my stash of old t-shirts! (Remember how I have them in all rainbow colors, originally collected for my upcycled t-shirt dress?)

I thought that bright red would be the perfect complementary color for some straps. I thought and thought about how to make them cute, and jibe with the style of the skirt. My aha moment: ruffle straps!

I laid the t-shirt flat to cut 1 1/2 inch strips for the straps. I cut them the full length of the shirt - about twice as long as the actual length of the straps, since I intended to ruffle them, which would halve the length.

I thought some more about how to make the ruffle straps cute yet also functional (and durable). I knew the ruffled knit part would need to be sewn onto another piece of fabric, and at the time I couldn't think of a good way to do that with the t-shirt knit. (If I had it to do over I'd probably just sew two layers of t-shirt ruffle together.) I looked around at my random fabric supplies and spotted this pink ribbon. I thought it would make a cute and unique backing for the ruffles, and would also coordinate with the colors of the dress.  I hemmed the edges to make finished strap pieces.

This is me going a little too crazy with the picture-taking. I guess I was coming out of blog-withdrawal with a bit too much vengeance.

Here's my ruffle, ready to be attached to the ribbon backing!

A note about jersey (t-shirt) knit and ruffling: they are BFF's. It is seriously so super easy to ruffle jersey knit (yet another reason I love working with knits!). All I do is use a basting stitch (which is simply the widest stitch width your machine will do - width 5.0 on mine) straight down the middle of the fabric strip, and most of the ruffling does itself! I did have to scrunch it up a little more in this case, since I wanted it to be .really. ruffly. (To learn how to do that, look up a ruffle tutorial on google. Also suprisingly easy.)

The finished strap! Ready to be attached. I like the little white ribbon stitching poking out.

So with the straps ready to attach, I now needed to address the width of the skirt around the top to make sure it would fit Annabel nicely. I grabbed a dress [from her dirty laundry hamper - eww] that I knew fit her just right to get a good measurement. I assumed I'd need to take in the skirt's "waistband" at least a little bit. Imagine my happy surprise when I discovered that it was .exactly. the right width all on its own! See?

Please graciously ignore the wrinkled dirty nastiness of the pink dress. Note above, when I said I took it out of her dirty laundry hamper. And also, note to self: reattach the end of that halter strap!

So the top width was perfect, which was awesome, because I really didn't want to sew through two layers of thick elastic and fabric to take that in. (My machine does not like sewing through thick layers of fabric. Much language restraint is required when I attempt that.) There was one problem though. Even though the top was the right width, the sides widened out way too enthusiastically. I knew it would look weird and muu muu-like if I didn't do something.

Note the difference in width between the pink dress (which fits Annabel perfectly) and the purple section of the skirt, which will be the top of the dress. It definitely needed some adjustment.

So, I did a little experiment to try to very quickly and simply bring that top section in a bit. I made a straight line of stitching down the inside of the side seams of the top of the skirt - basically, took in the purple section about an inch and a half on each side. I hope I'm making sense. It looked like this:

I wasn't sure how this seam would look on the outside, and was prepared to take it out if it looked funny and try something else. But, happily, I could hardly tell:

This seam is underneath her armpits anyway - so no one will notice anything.

Success! Now the purple section is sized to fit around her chest just right:

The adjusted version. You might not be able to tell much difference looking at it by itself, but it's about three inches narrower around that purple section. It will fit her much more nicely this way.

Aaaand, voila! Kindergartner's skirt = toddler dress in about 45 minutes.

I'm still on the fence about whether I'm happy with how the straps turned out...but I think I like them! Next time I'll do a double-layered ruffle, sewn together, rather than the two-toned thing. But hey, it fits with the rainbow theme, right? (Also, the straps aren't crooked,even though they kind of look like it in this picture.)

I'm very happy I went with red for the straps. It ties the whole color scheme together. I think the pink fits in too.

So now, Annabel has a cute, twirly, and delightfully rainbowy dress to wear to her rainbow birthday party! I like that the dress definitely says "rainbow" without being obnoxiously Roy G. Biv. Bright and fun, just like its wearer. Annabel's not going to model this dress right now because it will be a special birthday surprise for her. (Though in the event that she refuses to wear it, which is always a possibility, fear not. I do have backup outfit plans.)

...So if you made it all the way through that, I'm very impressed! :D I'm hoping from here on out to be a lot more present on this here blog. I miss it!