Upcycled Toddler T-Shirt Dress

I was introduced to a FABULOUS toddler t-shirt dress a few weeks ago, and I couldn't get the tutorial out of my head. Cheri put it together from I Am Momma Hear Me Roar. You can find the tutorial here.

This is my version:

Cheri actually handpainted some of the t-shirt material that she used. I knew I had some fun old shirts that I hadn't worn in a while, so I grabbed them and got started. I made two dresses in under two hours, using a turtleneck as the top for one and a long-sleeve t-shirt top for the other. The strips all came from the same shirts.

When I finished the dress for my daughter (the other is for a friend's daughter) I asked her to model it for me. From the start the shoot was not going well. My model was being camera shy:


Here you can at least see how the dress falls:


My model was getting delirious at this point. I think its funny that it looks like her tights match her sheet.


Awww . . . this is better!


Here is the finished dress. In Cheri's tutorial she sews the strips wrong sides together to have the horizontal seams show. I did this on the first dress, but sort of forgot on Ella's.


I showed the dress to my husband and he said he recognized the strips in the dress right away! Notice that the last strip is actually from the bottom of a shirt so that you don't have to hem the dress!


Here is the one I made for my little friend Mary Larkin, complete with the now-famous ruffle pin that her mother made:


Here is a close-up of the shirt fabrics, which came from:

Target
Old Navy
Marshalls
Old Navy

And isn't the twirly turtleneck so sweet with the ruffle pin?


Thanks for the great tutorial Cheri! I will definitely be making more of these in the future. To see my other two upcycled dresses, visit these links:

Ruffle Dress / Tunic Tutorial

Upcycled T-shirt to Toddler Dress Tutorial

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