If you’re crafty, you’ve seen these little beauties all over the internet. A quick search on etsy turns up over 2500 hits. Most dresses seem to retail for just under $20. The most difficult thing about these dresses seemed to be finding a free pattern/tutorial/template to make the damn things, but I finally found an easy to use one at sewingmamas.com (registration and pattern is free).
My one problem was, no pillowcases. I use the ones I have around here. Not a problem, as the pattern I used tells you how much fabric width and length you’re looking for. It takes about 3/4 of a yard to make a pillowcase dress in size 3t (Little Bit needs the length) plus 2 yards of ribbon of your choice.
If you venture out to sewingmamas.com to use their pillowcase dress tutorial, I have one suggestion. Don’t use the straight cut binding to face/bind the arm holes. It’s a fiddley nightmare. Turn them under twice and stitch down OR get some ready-made bias tape that matches your dress fabric. The fabric not being cut on the bias makes it very hard to bet the binding to hug the curves and even though it’s tightly/well pinned, you may still need to go over certain areas, which doesn’t look awesome and it frustrating.
Just about two hours work netted two adorable sundresses. If you’re starting from ready-made pillowcases ( I wasn’t) it would probably take you less time as i had to cut the panels, sew them, trim the seams and hem the dresses, something a ready-made pillowcase would already have done for you.
Also, I cut Little Bit’s dress to the 3t length and she’s definitely going to need bloomers to make the dress “decent” for public wear. That’s okay. I also wanted modeling shots. Little Bit wore the first dress for 3.2 seconds, tore it off and refused to put it back on, being much happier in just her diaper.
So, anyway, here they are:
Michael Miller print
Some random print from Joann’s. Please ignore the ribbons. I cut them too short and will be fixing that after a trip to the craft store. As another aside, if you can make pillowcase dresses, you can make peasant tops…
And, we’ll be making these to use up our last little bit of fabric and make the Princess happy as she’s outgrown pillowcase dresses. Or at least, outgrown pillow case dresses of the yard variety.
Big Daddy and me plus our three little chicks. I'm a slightly obsessed, slightly scattered, homemaker crafting and cooking my way through busy days with our trio and grabbing at all of my loose ends. I hope to inspire struggling homemakers to embrace their inner crafty beast, to find some organization and rhythm and to tie all of their loose ends into pretty (though sometimes messy) bows.
