The idea for this dress came to me when I saw a (kind of trampy) tutu dress at GoodWill.  I wanted to make dress up clothes for my little niece.  The problem with commercially available dress up clothes for kids are that the quality is so poor.  One wash and they're done for.  My idea was to make machine washable play dresses for little girls.  This dress is the first step on my path.

Here's the original dress.

Original Dress

It's kind of hard to tell from this picture, but the dress has a bustier top with strappy sides.  Not exactly appropriate for a 4 year old!

Original Top

The top is a cotton blend shirt from Talbots.


I'm lucky that the top was an adult size 2.  Because the dress is being made for a child, I can cut it down without too much trouble.  A larger adult size might have required me to remake the arm holes.

First I cut the bustier from the tutu.  I wanted to make sure to leave as much waist band as possible.

Tutu Without Bustier

Bustier without tutu

 Next I removed the zipper.  Carefully cut around the the zipper and save it (you can use the zipper in another project).

Tutu with no zipper

 Cut the shirt down to size.  I used a pajama shirt for the pattern.

I used a child's size 6 shirt for a pattern

 Keeping as much of the original stitching as possible in tact, I cut the shirt to the smaller size.

Shirt Cut Down

 The rest of this process is pretty easy!  Turn the shirt inside out and stitch the sides.

With the right sides together, stitch the tutu to the shirt.


This entire process took about 30 minutes.

I REALLY hope that my niece likes it!

Update:  She LOVES it!



For more reFashion ideas, click HERE!