T Shirt into a Chic Summer Sundress

Also included in this tutorial is a super duper easy way to do armhole binding on sleeveless dresses like these.  It’s so easy, I promise you will never do it another way again.

 

 

 

About t shirt sizes….if you find a cute design on big t shirt that you think will make a great dress, it’s fairly easy to size it down to just about anything but baby size.  For babies and toddlers, I go with unisex kid sized t shirts 5/6 and 7/8 are easy to size down to young toddler size.  Larger sizes such as 10/12 and 14/16 are good for bigger toddlers.

 

Girl t shirts are usually not as boxy in fit.  They tend to be slimmer, so I tend to avoid those.  For bigger girls, I get men’s or unisex boxy style t shirts because you run into the “curvy t shirt” problem with ladies tees a lot as well.  Usually I stay with a Medium, Large, or XL in men’s.  When you get bigger, it gets more intensive in sizing them down to a little girl’s dress.

 

 

 

1.  Lay out the t shirt as shown, then cut the arms and top off as shown.

 

 

2.  Once you’ve cut off your sleeves, lay them out and cut them open flat at the seam as shown.

 

 

 

 

3.  Cut two 2 inch pieces at the widest part of the sleeve for your armhole binding.  Usually you’ll be doing this with a short sleeve t shirt, so I have a picture of a short sleeve version here.  The dress I’m making in the example is long sleeve.

 

4.  If you have a serger, serge the edge of the top of the front and back.  If you do not, no worries because knit does not fray.  I just like to have nice clean edges.

 

5.  Take your armhole bindings and press in half like shown.

 

 

Super Easy Armhole Binding Method

6. With the WRONG SIDE of the dress facing up, fold the armhole casing in half lengthwise with WRONG SIDES together.  Line it up along the armhole edge on the WRONG SIDE of the dress.  Pin it along the armhole’s WRONG SIDE.  Make sure you stretch a bit as you pin because the armhole binding needs to be stretched, so that it doesn’t come out wonky.

Notice how I left a little extra of the binding at the edges in the picture above.  When you snip it off later, it lines up perfectly.

7.  Begin sewing the binding along the armhole and making sure to pull the binding as you sew — not as far as it will go, but enough to give it a good stretch.  If you look at the picture, you can see I’m pulling tight enough that the knit fabric is looking like a ribknit.

**If you have a serger, serge the binding on.  If you just have a sewing machine, use a zigzag and then once you’re done, cut off the excess of the seam right up to the zigzag stitch.

8.  Once you have finished sewing the binding, flip the dress so that the right side is up, it should look like this with the seam on the right side of the fabric. It looks totally wrong, but believe me, it’s correct.

 

9.  Next, you will fold over the edge of the binding and sew close to the edge as pictured below. The arrow in this next picture is showing how you fold over the binding so that the seam is right on the edge.

 

To topstitch, I line the edge of the binding up with the inner side of my presser foot as shown.

 

 

Once you’ve topstitched the armholes, they will look like this.

 

 

 

*If you are wanting to add rosette embellishments, click here to go to that tutorial.**

11.  Next is inserting the ribbon.  I use a safety pin and insert it through the front pull through, then insert it into the back and come out the other side of the back. Then, I tie off on one shoulder.If you don’t like this, you can cut the ribbon in half and insert one in the front and one in the back and tie at each shoulder.  It’s really just a preference.

12.  Fit problems!!  So, let’s say you finish the dress and it fits like a tent or the arm holes are too hanging too low.  Here is my solution.  First put the dress on the child and determine how much of the armhole needs to be closed.  For the dress below, my youngest is teensy for her age, so I determined that 2 inches on each side of the armhole needed to go — a total of 4 inches off each armhole.

I took off the dress and then measured the 2 inches again and pinned.  Then, I pinned in a diagonal line towards the side seam of the hem.

In the picture below,  you can see the dress is upside down.  The reason for this is because it is better to sew from the hem TOWARD the armhole.  It’s much easier to start out lining up the hem than end up with a wonky hemline.

 

Then, I cut off the excess and left a 1/4 inch seam.  Doing this, made the dress fit perfectly.