My mother asked me to modify a T-shirt to make it a bit longer so she could wear it as a nightgown. I asked if I could take a little bit of creative liberty, and she said sure. I think the finished nightgown is relatively cute, and I was able to throw it together in a snap. (Well, a snap compared to some other projects).
I didn't take many pictures while was working, because the dreary winter lighting was wreaking havoc on my phone's camera, and I wasn't sure if this little project was exciting enough to document, so I'll try and keep it short.
This is the shirt I started with.
I dug through my scrap fabric and was able to find an old paint shirt in a complementary shade. It was in pretty bad shape, with lot of wear and tear around the back and shoulders and more than a few paint stains, but there was enough usable fabric to make the accents I wanted.
I sketched out my basic plan.
I kept the body of the dress very simple, because it’s meant to be loosefitting and I wanted to preserve the cute manatee design.
I sewed together the strips I cut from the other shirt to form a long strip.
I did a lettuce hem on the long strip and the sleeve pieces I cut out to give the material some extra flounce.
Then gathered the top edge of the strip with a running stitch.
I laid out all of the pieces, to see how it was coming together, and decided to use the hem I cut off of the original shirt inside out to create a tie for the back of the dress.
I sewed on the neckline and sleeves first, centering the sleeves at the shoulder seam. Then I sewed from the end of the sleeve to the bottom of the dress securing the waist ties in the seam as I went. Lastly, I pinned and sewed the bottom ruffle to finish off the dress.
Before and After
I had a little trouble with my serger on the neckline the first go-'round, so I had to redo it. I'm not entirely satisfied with the way the dress turned out, but overall I think it turned out pretty close to my original sketch, and my mom seemed happy enough with it.
