Week 2 Challenge

Okay for week 2, I decided to make a sweater dress for Alea. I love sweater dresses for kids and when Emme wore one of hers the other day, Alea said that she needed one like it. I had gotten this sweater at the thrift store for $8, it is 50% cashmere and 50% silk, sooo incredibly soft. I was originally going to re-design it for myself...but you know how that goes.

First thing I did was wash and dry it. The main reason I did this was because the care label says "Dry clean only" and I wanted to see what washing and drying would do. I can tell you that there is no way I am going to make (or buy for that matter) my kids any clothes that I will be dry cleaning. So, I think it barely shrank, it seemed just barely smaller, maybe.

I tried it on Alea and luckily the length was perfect and the neck opening was good too. So I have a basic dress pattern that I made out of one of Alea's dresses and then I adjusted as needed.


I cut off the sleeves on the dress side of the arm pit. I marked and sewed the dress width to fit. Then I took one of Alea's long sleeve shirts (the dress pattern I have is short sleeve) and matched it up with the sweater sleeve. I matched up the cuffs, so I would not have to mess with making/changing the cuff. I cut the sleeve where needed and trimmed up the width to fit. Then I re-attached the sleeves and viola! There was my dress!


Of course I had to embellish it a little. So I took some cotton/linen type material and cut 3 pieces the width and length of my yard stick. I sewed a strip of clear elastic down the center of one of the pieces and then sewed it around the dress in the waist area. Then I took the 2 other pieces of my fabric, sewed them together to make one long strip , then sewed clear elastic at the bottom edge of the fabric. I rolled that fabric together to make a rosette. Then hand sewed the bottom of the rosette, hand sewed a piece of felt over the bottom of the rosette and hand sewed the rosette to the dress. It took about an hour, so it's definitely a nap time project. When I do projects, I time them by how many nap times I need to make it :)


What do you think?? I made it a little big so she could were it all winter and also so she could wear a t-shirt and leggings underneath.


And if you are wondering where my Mom's challenge projects are, well they are coming. She is not so great with computers...we are working on sending me the pics and info :)





Please ignore the goofy poses, this is the best I could get :) Have a great Halloween weekend!