Warhol Dresses

 

I really love how these Warhol Dresses turned out!  They were made using another wonderful tutorial from Dana at MADE. 

 

The girls really like how soft and cozy they are.  Another plus is that I was able to make both of these dresses from old pieces of clothing of mine.

I used a navy blue maternity shirt (which I don’t plan to ever need again) and this “lovely” pink dress.  (Does it make it any better if I tell you that I used to wear it when I was  a Kindergarten teacher?  No?  O.K.)

 

The Warhol Dress pattern only goes up to a size 4 and my girls wear an 8.  I used the Pillowcase Dress pattern from Little Big Girl Studio to help me get the right size.  The Warhol Dress pattern is on the left and the pillowcase dress pattern is on the right.

 

I laid both patterns on top of each other so that I could get the size from the pillowcase dress pattern but have the shape of the top of the Warhol Dress pattern.  I then traced it out on freezer paper to make my own pattern.

 

 

I was trying to eek out two dresses for my girls out of this one dress of mine so I copied the pattern twice so that I could get a better visual of the layout.  I folded the dress in half to see if it would fit.  As you can see in this photo, the pattern overlaps by about 3” in the center. 

   

I decided to add a strip of the navy blue fabric from the shirt to make it work.  Then I got the idea to add some ruffle.  It was super easy!  You don’t have to finish the edges because knit doesn’t fray.  I just cut a long strip of fabric ( It should be around 2 times as long as the length of the dress. 

 

Then I set my stitch length to the longest setting and increased the tension to the maximum setting.  I sewed right up the center of the strip and it pretty much gathered up on it’s own.  I just gave the threads a little extra pull and it was perfect.  Then I put all of the settings back to normal on my machine and sewed the ruffle to the center of the dress.

 

 

 

Now I did have a little setback with the next step.  Do you ever have that experience while sewing that something isn’t going to work out but you don’t listen to that little voice and you do it anyway and yep, you were right big disaster?  Maybe this is just me.

 

Here is what happened.  I wanted to use the blue fabric to make the ties but because it was a maternity shirt, the fabric was super stretchy.  I figured that the weight of the dress would pull too much on it but I went right ahead and sewed it on anyway.

 

All of the gathers came out because the blue fabric was so stretchy.  It also didn’t hold up the dress at all.  I tried it on my girls and it was beyond huge!

So I had a little 3 HOUR date with my seam ripper!  It took this long because when I sew with knits I always use a triple stitch.  It wasn’t a total waist of time though because I got to sit back and listen to some classical music.  Oh who am I kidding I watched the season finale of Biggest Loser!   :)

Once I finally got the blue ties off, I gathered the top of the dress again and then sewed the begeez out of the gathers so that they wouldn’t shift.

 

Next I cut out ties from the pink fabric.  I made the ties a bit wider and I sprayed the fabric with some spray starch to make it easier to work with.  

 

Then I pinned it really well before I started sewing.

 

 

Guess what?  I like the pink ties better.

 

   

 

I really liked this pattern and I love the end results even more!

         

 

Happy Sewing!