“How to sew a button on” sounds better to me, but then I’d be ending my title with a preposition.

Does that even matter in a title? This title is a fragment, after all.

Anyhoo!

Today’s topic has been requested by several readers.  Because my mom taught me how to sew when I was a kid, doing a post on button-sewing would not have occurred to me (I live in a “Hasn’t everyone been taught how to sew?” bubble, apparently).

So, it’s lovely that you guys send in requests, because I do love to write posts that meet your needs.

Reattaching errant buttons is a skill every frugal person should have in their repertoire…it’s one of the simplest but most often needed mending tasks, and if you can sew a button on properly, you can greatly extend the useful life of your clothes.

You’ll need some thread, a sharp needle (not the blunt sort used for cross-stitching), and some scissors.

And the button.

But you knew that, right?

Cut a length of thread, thread it through the eye of the needle, and tie the loose ends together with a knot or two.  This gives you a double thickness of thread and prevents the thread from coming out of the needle.

Find the appropriate spot for the button. There should be some markings left by the previous stitches.

Starting from the underside of the clothing, push the needle up through one of the button holes and down through another, repeating until the button looks securely attached.  If your button has two sets of holes, stick with doing just one set of stitches for now (more on that later).

If your button only has two holes, your stitching pattern will be obvious, but if it’s got four holes, you can either do two parallel vertical sets of stitches, or you can use a cross-stitch pattern.  If there are multiple buttons on the garment, just do what matches the other buttons.

To keep my stitches secure, when I’m done sewing, I run the needle through the back of the fabric, making a loop, and then run the needle through the loop, making a knot. I usually do two of these knots, just to be on the safe side.

Now, to make very certain you don’t lose your button, finish one set of stitches, tie the thread off, clip it with a scissors and then do the other set of stitches with a new thread.

This way, even if one set of stitches comes loose, the other side won’t unravel too, and the button will still be attached to your clothing item.

So, that’s all there is to it!  Don’t let another perfectly good item of clothing sit unused for lack of a button…you can totally do this.

By the way, if you’re new to sewing, you may not have a huge stash of thread sitting around your house, and so it may be a little bit tricky to find a color that matches.  Thread is surprisingly pricey (several dollars for a spool at Michael’s), so you probably won’t want to run out and buy every color under the sun.

I’d suggest keeping white, black, and tan thread around as those will meet most of your button-sewing needs.  Also, sometimes you can find affordable little mending kits at craft stores and those often have a nice assortment of colors on small spools.

Keep in mind that if the button won’t actually be showing much, the thread doesn’t have to be a perfect match.  I didn’t have the appropriate green thread for this button, but since it’s on the waistband of a skort and I never tuck my shirt in while wearing it, a slight color difference wasn’t a big deal.

Do any of you experienced menders have button-sewing tips to add to mine?

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Today’s 365 post: A fish, of course.

Joshua’s 365 post: Fortune-Teller

We’re having a lot of miscellaneous posts around here these days, aren’t we?

I promise that after the holidays have past, I’ll write some more substantive posts (I have a million ideas swirling around in my head), but for now, miscellany is what works for me.

Can you guess what this gift bag is made from?

It was inspired by this little pillow that Lisey made and embroidered.

And the fabric she used came from my old ironing board cover.  Yes, indeed.

I’ve used that cover since we got married 13 years ago, and this year, it got so worn, it started to tear.  Happily, I found a new ironing board cover at Goodwill (yay for Target goods at Goodwill), so I retired my old silver one.

As you know, I hate to throw stuff away, and the fabric from the cover was a fun metallic type, so I folded it up and stuck it in my basket of fabric.  Lisey’s been busy embroidering and sewing this fall, and she had the brilliant idea to cut the cover up and embroider it.

I liked hers so much, I gave it a try with a portion of the fabric, and this was the result.

If I had it to do over again, I’d have place the embroidered stars lower on the bag, because once you put something in the bag and tie it up, the stars are decidedly not centered anymore.

Still, I’m pretty pleased that something so useful has come from what most people would categorize as trash.

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Last year, I made some very colorful gift bags from a pj shirt that we got for free…I think it was from a church clothing exchange or something.  Now, my particular tastes run more towards burgundy velvet, or black.

However, my kids think that obnoxiously colored bags are significantly more beautiful. 

I made two bags out of the sleeves, which worked out great because the cuffs were already make of pink satin…perfect for the top of a gift bag.  And making a bag from sleeves is super easy because pretty much all you have to do is hem the bottom!

I made a big bag from the body of the shirt.  I use this to wrap Lisey’s gifts because she can be trusted not to unbutton the bag to take a peek, but if I wanted to use it for Sonia or Zoe, I could just sew the placket shut.

and I even used the collar portion to make a small sort of asymmetrical bag.

That worked out nicely because the collar trim makes kind of a nice top.

________________________________

Do you know what’s really lovely about cloth gift bags?  Once you have them made, the wrapping process is SO easy.

1. Place items in bag.

2. Tie a ribbon around the top.

Love it!

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You’re probably not in a position today to make a pile of gift bags, but if you’d like to give it a try sometime in the coming year, bookmark my post about how to make cloth gift bags.  It’s not hard, and it’s a great way to salvage old clothes (or, um, ironing board covers!).

Have a lovely Christmas Eve day!  I’m off to make French Bread, several nut rolls, and a ring of Monkey Bread (which will sit in the fridge overnight, to be baked tomorrow morning) before we celebrate with my in-laws later today.

Today’s 365 post: “I don’t want any sprinkles to get me in the eyes, Mommy!”

Today’s post is going to be a quickie (but hopefully it’ll be helpful!).

I apologize in advance for the many color variations in the following photos. Who knew green was so hard to photograph?? It confuses my camera mightily.

So, Lisey had this long-sleeved hand-me-down shirt, and somehow, a hole happened in the sleeve area.

I’m always conflicted when I have things like this. I can’t donate them, because no one would buy them at Goodwill, and because I hate to throw things away, I usually try to think of some sort of fix or alternate use.

I’m embarrassed to say that this shirt sat in my, “I don’t know what to do with this” pile for a long, long, time before I had a revelation.

A long-sleeved shirt can be made into a short-sleeved shirt.

Duh.

So I laid one of Sonia’s short sleeved shirts on top of the long sleeved shirt (I put this off for so long, the shirt is now Sonia’s size, not Lisey’s!).

And I just cut the sleeves right off.

If this were a woven shirt, I’d have to hem the new sleeves to prevent fraying, but for some strange reason, knit fabrics don’t fray.

After a quick trip through the washer and dryer, the new sleeve edges are curling up just like I’d hoped they would.

Excellent.  I love it when I don’t have to hem.

Of course, if you prefer to do things all proper-like, you could definitely iron the edges under and do a real hem, or you could do a lettuce-style hem if you wanted a ruffly edge.

This is good enough for me, though, and I’m pleased that this shirt will be play clothes instead of trash.  Yay!

Today’s 365 post: She really is mine.

(by the way, if you’d like to get my 365 photos in your email inbox, just hop over to the main 365 page and enter your email address into the subscription box on the right.  And of course, you can get Frugal Girl posts in your email inbox by subscribing. It’s free, and I promise there will be no spam. )

When I shared the photos of Lisey’s ruffly skirt with you, several of you requested a photo tutorial.  I aim to please, so I hacked up another pair of Lisey’s worn-out khakis to make another skirt and this time, I took pictures.

I did the various steps of this skirt in different areas of my house and it was a rainy, cloudy day, so the color in the photos varies some.  My apologies.

Also, I added some text notes to the photos, but it might be a little bit hard to read.  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice this until I finished all the photos.  Whoops.  You can click on each photo to enlarge it, though, and the text should be nice and clear that way.

So, to start you’ll need a pair of pants that have holes in the knees.  It’s preferable to have a hole in only one knee because this will provide you with more ruffle material.

Using a seam ripper, take out the crotch seam , part of the leg seams, and the inseam (inseam seam?  No, that seems redundant!).  You’ll need to do this in the front and the back of the pants.

This is arguably the most annoying part of this project, so I suggest doing it while you’re riding in the car or listening to an audiobook so that you don’t want to rip your hair out at the tedium of seamripping.

Cut the legs off of the pants.  Exactly where you cut them off is up to you.  I usually cut them even with that piece of fabric that’s folded back in the above picture (I lay it down and then cut even with it).

Here’s how I cut the legs of the original ruffled skirt.

Next, you’ll want to iron under the seams you ripped out of the front and back of the pants (that’s already done in the above photo).  There’s not an exact science to this, but you will want to iron before you sew.  The new seam will be different than the old one, and the fabric will not willingly go along with your plan unless you iron it.

Here’s what the front should look like (these next two photos are from the original ruffled skirt).

and here’s the back.

Once you’ve got the back and the front ironed, pin the seam to hold it down and sew the length of your new seams.  Try to make the new seams consistent with the remains of the old one (for instance, if it’s double stitched, double stitch it).

I only showed the front seam here, but obviously you need to sew the back seam as well.

That’s all you need to do to the top of the skirt!  On to the ruffle.  To make this, cut the pant legs apart at the seams so that you end up with several strips of fabric (cut the holey knee part out!).  These will form the ruffle, but you’ll need to sew them together first.

Put the short ends of two pieces together, right sides together, and sew them.  Repeat with the remaining pieces, and your last seam should sew your pieces into a loop.

(I didn’t remember to sew mine into a loop until a little later, so just ignore that in the photos!)

Depending on how things went when you cut the legs into strips, you may will need to do some trimming to make your leg pieces even.

You’ll want to hem the ruffle before you gather it and attach it to the skirt (I tried hemming it afterwards the first time and would not recommend it!).  First, iron the edge over about 1/4 inch, and sew along the edge.

Fold and iron the sewn edge over again, and sew around the length.  This is the hem of the ruffle, so you’ll want to decide what type of hem will look best…if the rest of the top-stitching on the skirt is double-stitched, then you’ll want to double-stitch the hem.  In this case, the skirt was all single-stitched,  so I did a simple hem about 5/8 inch from the edge.

Now’s the time to decide how long you want your ruffle to be…hold it up to the top portion of the skirt and cut your about-to-be-ruffled strip to the length you desire.  I usually end up deciding to trim mine a bit so that the ruffle looks sort of perky.

Next, using some sturdy thread and a long stitch length, baste around the unfinished edge of the ruffle, leaving thread ends that are long enough to use for gathering.

Gently pull on the top threads to gather the fabric loosely.

Pin the ruffle to the skirt, adjusting the gathering as necessary to make the ruffle fit around the skirt.

Sew the gathered ruffle onto the skirt, making sure to stay just to the left of the gathering threads.

The attached ruffle should look like this once you’ve sewn it on.

To help make the skirt look neat, iron the seam up, like so.  Also, it’s a good idea to do a zig-zag stitch around the raw edges of the ruffle so that they’ll resist fraying.

To secure the ruffle and make the skirt look a little more finished, topstitch around the unruffled portion of the skirt, staying close to the edge.

(I have no idea why I took this picture upside down)

And that’s it!  The skirt is done.  To dress Lisey’s up a little, I made a flower using a tutorial I found thanks to Google.

I hope that wasn’t too confusing.  If it was, feel free to check out the ruffled skirt tutorial that inspired mine, as her instructions may be clearer!

Happy refashioning!

Today’s 365 post: Blowing bubbles always makes you go sort of cross-eyed.

A lot of people who are frugal newbies assume that buying fabric and sewing clothes basically from scratch is an uber-frugal practice, and that they haven’t really arrived until their family is wearing homemade clothing from head to toe.

If you are one of these people, take heart!  Sewing your own clothes is usually time-consuming and expensive (if you buy new materials), and it’s not a necessary practice.

(Refashioning and upcycling are a different story, of course.  Projects of that sort can be fast and frugal.)

No, if you really want to use your sewing skills to save money, mending is where it’s at! If you learn how to sew on a button, fix a seam, apply a patch, or mend a hem, you can greatly reduce your clothing expenditures and extend the life of your clothing (that’s good for your wallet and the earth).  Mending skills also come in handy when you are a thrift store shopper because thrift store clothing can often be made like new again with a bit of sewing.

You can do a lot of mending by hand, but a sewing machine makes this type of task way easier. You don’t need something really expensive or complicated…I use a $100 Brother machine.  I know $100 isn’t pocket change, but if you faithfully mend your clothes, your machine can pay for itself in short order.  Fix 5 items that have a replacement cost of $20/each, and you’ve already broken even.

I haven’t kept track of how many clothing items I’ve mended, but I’m positive that my machine has paid for itself multiple times.

Anyways, I’ve been catching up on my mending this summer, and I have pictures of two of those endeavors to share with you. 

I don’t know if you have a “uniform” but I kind of do…when the weather is cool, I love to wear jeans and long-sleeved, v-neck knit shirts (usually black or white because I am just that boring!).

Happily I recently found two of these…one was $2.99 at Goodwill (new from Target), and the other was free, from our sister church’s Free Flea.

These shirts were in brand-new shape, but they both had the same problem.

Each sported a small hole on the arm seam. Happily, holes like this are super-easy to fix. I just loaded my machine up with black thread, turned the shirt inside out, and sewed a slightly modified arm seam that closed the hole. It probably took me about 2 minutes per shirt, and now they’re both as good as new.

(the shirts really are a nice black color.  But I fail at capturing black shirts on camera.  My apologies.)

Sometimes I use my machine to do patches, but not in the traditional sense.  If the article of clothing doesn’t need to be really fabulous looking, I often put a patch inside the garment instead of outside.

For instance, Joshua’s very favorite pair of shorts came apart at the leg hem. So, I cut a strip of fabric out of an old pillowcase and sewed it all around the outside edge of the rip, like so.

I feel like this is a little less noticeable on the outside than a traditional patch is, and it’s an awful lot easier because you don’t have to be very neat with the patch edges! And sometimes, if the hole is in a perfect place, you can make your patch seams line up with some existing stitching on the garment (that’s what I did on the bottom edge of this patch).

The shorts don’t look like new, but they were pretty weathered looking to begin with and so the frayed portion blends right in.    And Joshua is pleased that he doesn’t have to give up his favorite shorts quite yet.

Are you a mender? And if you are, do you mend by hand or with a machine?

P.S.  If you’re new here, you might be interested in browsing through my posts about sewing.

Today’s 365 post: So long, farewell…

After I made Lisey’s pink Gap pants into cut-off shorts for her, I decided I wanted to make something out of the pant legs, since they were in fairly good shape below the ripped knee portions.  I’ve made stuffed animal sleeping bags out of pant legs before, but this time I decided to make a honest-to-goodness bag (and since I had two pant-legs, I actually made two bags; one for Sonia and one for Lisey).

Since a pant leg is already the size and shape of a bag, this is a super-easy sewing project.  And if you’re like me, you’ll find great satisfaction in making something useful out of what was essentially a rag.

Here’s the pant leg I started with.  I used a scissors to cut a straight line across the top of the pant leg, making sure to cut low enough to get rid of any ripped or worn parts (I did make the line straighter after I took this picture!).

Because I wanted to dress these bags up a little bit, I decided to sew some ribbon over the double-stitched seam on the front of the bag.  For the first bag, I did this without cutting the pant leg open.  Be warned, though; this is sort of a pain in the booty.  So for the second bag, I just used a scissors to cut the pant leg open right by the side seam.

I then pinned the ribbon right over the seam and sewed a straight stitch down each side.

After that, I put the right sides together and re-sewed the side seam that I’d cut.  After trying it both ways, I’d definitely recommend opening up the pant leg.  It required an extra seam, yes, but the ribbon-sewing part was SO much easier.

I then turned the bag inside out and sewed across the bottom of the pant leg.  The cuff of these pants was pretty torn up, so I sewed above the hem.  This also saved me from having to sew through the 4 thicknesses of fabric that make up the pant hem.

To make sure the corners turned out nicely, I used a scissors to cut a triangle off of each side of the bottom hem.

When I turned the bag inside out, I used the end of a pair of scissors to kind of push the corners out, as they’re a little bit stubborn.

So, on to the top.  I wanted to use matching ribbon for the handles, so I cut two pieces to the length I wanted.  I then pinned each end of the ribbon to the bag (two in front, two in back).  If you’re using ribbon that’s got a right and wrong side, you’ll want to pin these to the bag with the wrong side up.

To hold the ribbon in place, I sewed a small seam across the top of each ribbon piece.

Then I ironed the edge over towards the inside of the bag (maybe 1/8 of an inch) and sewed the edge down.

At this point, I almost screwed up by leaving the ribbons pinned down.  So, remember to unpin them at this point and put them up into their handle position (I realize mine look wrong here, but I did pull them up!)

I ironed the top edge of your bag towards the inside of the bag (I did mine at about 5/8 of an inch, but really, however far you want to fold it over is fine!) and sewed it, making sure not to catch the ribbon handles in my seam.

This method produces an inside seam that doesn’t have any raw edges…even the ribbon handles are folder under the seam.

(I know my seam looks crooked inside the bag..that’s because I didn’t cut the top of the bag perfectly evenly, so I had to adjust my folded seam to make the top of the bag straight!).

To make sure that the ribbons stay put, I sewed a quick little seam over the ribbon at the 4 places where it attaches to the bag.

If you want, you can leave the bag as-is, or you can embellish it.  I decided to put flowers on both of my bags.  I rummaged around in my scrapbook drawer and found some fabric flowers.  I hand-sewed several together to make a more 3-dimensional flower (you don’t have to be super neat about the sewing, because you’re going to cover it up later).

Then we chose a button from my button box to attach the flower to the bag and to serve as a cover for my hand-stitching.

Sonia’s bag is very similar except that she’s got pink ribbon handles (though they look white in the picture!) and her flower is a little bit different.

My girls are very pleased with these bags (Sonia especially, because she loves to put little things in bags and carry them around!), and Zoe is anxiously waiting for me to cut up another pair of pants so that she can have a bag too.

Today’s 365 post: Old and New (or rather, New and Old)

Sometimes when pants start to wear out, especially in the knee area, I like to make skirts (I make plain ones and I recently made a ruffle version).  Cute though they are, skirts are definitely not the fastest way to reuse hole-y pants.  No, if speed is the name of the game, cut-offs totally rock.

Lisey got a pair of Gap pink long pants for Christmas from her grandmother several years back and this winter, she wore a long, skinny, horizontal hole across the knee.

I really hate doing knee patches on children’s pants, so I opted just to cut the legs off.  And because I was feeling particularly lazy, I decided not to even bother with a hem and I left a raw edge instead.

These pants were made of multiple panels, though, so if I did nothing, they’d start to come apart after a few washings.  So, I just sewed a straight stitch all the way around each leg opening, leaving sufficient room for fraying.

I just cut these off recently, so the fraying is still a work in progress (it gets better with each wash!).  And as you can see, there are some threads I need to snip.

I’m really glad to have breathed a little more life into these pants!  I left them fairly long, so between the length and the fact that the waist is nowhere near too tight (it’s one of the adjustable kind), I think these shorts may carry her through another few summers before she hands them down to her sisters.

The skirts I make from pants make use of the pant legs, but cut-offs really don’t.  Worry not, though…I didn’t throw them away!  But, what I did with them is a whole ‘nother post, and that’s coming on Tuesday. 

Lisey’s cut-offs are so cute on her, I’m seriously eyeing some pants in my closet and thinking that I might try this for myself too (I’ve got a pair that are a little too short and have a paint stain on the leg).  I’ll update you if I give it a try!

Can you tell it’s summertime? I’ve been using my sewing machine a lot more than usual because now that we’re on break from homeschooling, I actually have something approaching free time.

Ahhh.  I love summer (not so much the weather…just the break from school!).

Anyways, I’ve been slowly working through my pile of clothes to mend/modify, and last week I tackled a pair of Lisey’s khaki pants. They were getting a little too short for her, but the main problem is that there was a gaping hole in one knee.

I briefly considered patching it, but then thought better of it. I hate trying to maneuver a sewing machine around in a kid-sized pant leg.

So, I decided to make a skirt. I cut the legs off even with the hole in the knee, and removed the stitching from most of the front inseam (usually up the to zipper works well).

And I removed stitching partway up the back as well.

Next, I folded the raw edges under to make a new, straight seam.

And I did the same thing in the back.

After sewing those two new seams down, I decided to try something different than the straight skirts I’ve done before.  I’d seen a ruffled skirt tutorial recently, so I decided to give that a try (except that I did it from memory instead of actually looking at the tutorial, and that made the project a little harder!).

Unfortunately, at this point I stopped taking pictures and just plowed through the project.  You can go look at the tutorial for more details, but basically I took the leg pieces from the pants, cut the thick seams out, cut the legs into strips (each leg made two strips) and sewed them into a long strip of fabric. After that, I sewed the two ends of the strip together to make a large loop.

I really should have taken pictures. Even I’m confused by that last paragraph!

I then cut the skirt like so, to make an even edge for attaching the ruffle.

I gathered the top edge of the long loop I’d sewn, pinned it to the bottom edge of the skirt, and sewed it on.  After that, I hemmed the bottom of the ruffle.  This was kind of stupid, because it’s really hard to hem a little ruffle…if I’d consulted the tutorial before making this skirt, I’d have hemmed the ruffle before I gathered it!  That would have saved me some difficulty.

But in spite of my stupidity, I’m still pleased with the end result.

and so is Lisey.

Perhaps Sonia needs one of these too. If I do end up making one for her, I promise I will be more diligent with the picture taking!

Second-hand clothes shopping often requires a bit more creativity than new-clothes shopping does.  Really, this is true with most any second-hand shopping…a lot of used things just need a little bit of fixing, updating, or customizing.  If you can get used to looking past what you initially see and instead look at what the item could be, you’ll find a whole new word of possibilities before you.

The fish dress I made for Zoe is an example of this, and I have two other clothing-related examples to share with you today.

First, we’ve been checking Goodwill each week to see if we can find a collared shirt for Joshua to wear. I think I’ve only ever bought him one before (and I shared it here on my blog!) because usually we get piles of these as hand me downs.

The hand-me-down short-sleeve polo has been in short supply lately, though. And since Joshua is pretty picky about what he’ll wear, finding one at Goodwill has been a little tricky.

Recently, though, we found this shirt for $1.25.

It’s not quite a polo, but it’s close enough for me. The main problem with it is that the sleeves were really funky. I didn’t manage to catch this well in a photo, but a lot of the graphic design looked like something out of Rocky and Bullwinkle (really 60′s-ish), and I thought it looked kind of funny with the more modern graphics on the rest of the shirt.

So, I pulled up the short sleeves, took a scissors, and cut the long sleeves right off. This is not an easy task with all faux-layered shirts, as sometimes the long sleeve is sewed onto the short sleeve. In this case, though, the long sleeves were attached to the shoulder seams, which made it very simple to remove them without damaging the short sleeves (I checked this before I bought the shirt).

I think this took me all of about 2 minutes, as there was no sewing required. I love that. And I’m especially happy that Joshua’s happy with the result.

I recently modified something for myself as well.  Our sister church has a bi-annual Free Flea event (everyone brings in clothing and household items that they don’t want and the items are all given away for free), and I found a white knee-length Forever 21 skirt while I was helping to sort bags and bags of donations.

I have kind of a thing for white dresses and skirts, so this immediately appealed to me.  The only thing I didn’t like was the lace trim at the hem.

I thought it was reminiscent of a tablecloth. Or something.

Plus, though I like being feminine, I do lean towards the more simple end of things, which means that lace is not my favorite thing ever.  And given that the fabric has flowers all over it to begin with, I felt like the lace was just too much.

So, I ironed the edge under and sewed a new, plainer-looking hem.

Yay! That’s much better. I love to wear skirts in the summertime, so I’m tickled to have a new one that cost me exactly $0.

(thanks to Mr. FG for manning the camera!)

So, the next time you go thrift shopping or you get a bag of hand-me-downs, look at the clothes with a new eye.  With some basic sewing skills (or maybe even just a pair of scissors), you might be able to turn a so-so item of clothing into something you love.

This project has been a long time coming. Last fall sometime I spied a dress at Goodwill and it caught my eye because of the fish print (in case you’re new around here and aren’t aware of this, Zoe is completely and utterly obsessed with fish and really, with any animal that lives in the water).

It wasn’t in particularly good shape (some of the seams were coming loose, the elastic at the collar wasn’t very stretchy, and the elastic casing was coming apart.). So, I exercised my new haggling skills and managed to pay $1 for the dress.

The dress was way too big for Zoe (really, it was a little too big even for Lisey), but I figured that I could modify it and make something that would work for Zoe.

But you know how good intentions are.

The dress sat in my office closet all winter long, taunting me.

Happily, summer is here, formal homeschooling is over for the year now, and I have some free time (or at least something close to that), so I dragged my sewing machine out of the closet and gave this a go.

I didn’t use a pattern for this and kind of figured it out by trial and error (mostly error, it seems! If I ever do this again, it’ll be a lot easier.)

Using a dress of Zoe’s, I traced out the basic shape of the dress and cut it out.  I sewed two new side seams, a new neckline seam, and then I ironed over the edges of the armholes and sewed those.

Using some of the extra material I’d cut off the dress, I made some casing (I think that’s what it’s called!) to use for the straps of the dress.

After I finished with that, I was still kind of unhappy with how the dress looked.  Dresses without a waistband are super easy to make, but I don’t really like the way they just hang shapelessly.  Plus, my topstitching on the necklines wasn’t super-duper straight.

So, I rummaged in my scrapbooking drawer and found this.

This ribbon came with a fleece sheet set we gave Sonia at Christmastime, and I’d saved it in hopes that I’d be able to use it for scrapbooking purposes.

Obviously, I wasn’t hoping to emblazon my scrapbooks with the Berkshire Bedding logo…no, what tempted me to keep this ribbon was the plain underside.   It kind of reminded me of grosgrain ribbon, and I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

First, I sewed a strip at the neckline, but the dress was still looking a little too shapeless, and the one strip of blue ribbon looked kind of random.  So, I scrounged up another piece and much to my delight, I found it was long enough to make a sort of faux waistline for the dress.

Ahh, much better!

As you can see in one of the previous pictures, I also used a piece to trim the back of the dress.

My final problem was that the dress ended up being a little shorter than I wanted it to be.  Fortunately, I had not hacked up the strip of fabric I cut off of the bottom of the dress, so I simply reattached it (I tried gathering it, but I didn’t have enough fabric).

I actually kind of like it this way because it gives the bottom of the dress more interest.

So, what does Zoe think?

She’s very pleased.

Since the armholes on this dress are pretty big and the straps are infinitely adjustable, I think Zoe will get several summers of wear out of this dress, much like she has with her white dress.

Who knows?  It might even be a shirt for her someday.

This dress is all sorts of imperfect (my top-stitching wouldn’t win any awards, some parts of it aren’t exactly symmetrical), but I think that it’s going to bring Zoe a lot of joy.

And me? I’m happy that she’s happy. And I would be lying if I didn’t also mention that I am ridiculously tickled by the fact that this project only cost me $1 and that it re-used two things that were previously pretty unusable (the packaging ribbon and the falling-apart dress).

What can I say? I’m easily pleased.