Refashion a Girl's Dress from a Woman's Polo and a Baby Onesie!

Have a pile of clothes on it's way to Goodwill? Why not give a couple pieces new life and refashion them into something new and modern! I used an old white polo shirt and a blue striped baby onesie to make this dress:

Using the thick knit for the dress made it perfect and extremely comfortable and warm for winter (we live in Texas, so more like fall for the rest of the US!)

I think the blue stripes not only gives the dress visual interest but it looks kind-of nautical...

Want to see how I made it?

Here is what I started with:

Next I cut off the collar, sleeves and the bottom cuff.

Using one of my daughter's dresses as a pattern for the length and width I cut the white fabric to match.

Here is what the back looks like:

I used the back piece to cut the front piece.

Cut off the buttons and seaming on the front.

Here is what the front piece looks like.

I cut the onsie up the same way and avoiding the screen printed dog on the front.  I had to cut out 3 pieces because the onesie is so small and the length I needed was more than I thought.

The pieces have a width of 6 inches (folded in half in picture below) I sewed the 3 pieces together to get the correct lenght to go from the front of the yoke, around the neck and back down the other side of the front yoke.

I used the existing sleeves from the polo shirt, just cut off the seam and decreased the width to the sleeve width of your child. Laying the sleeve onto the cut front and back pieces I cut the top of the sleeves to follow the angle of the yoke, back of the neck and where the sleeves are going to be attached to the sides of the dress.

Sew the sleeves onto the dress first then sew from the end of the sleeve, all the way up and then down the sides of the dress- it just is easier this way.

Next attach the collar by sandwiching the dress in between the folded collar.

Have the child try on the dress and mark where the button should be, attach the button and a little elastic loop and you are done!

I also made these hair flowers with a book I got at the library: Kanzashi in Bloom by Diane Gilleland

I am going to enter this dress into the Sew-Vivor competition over at Family Ever After blog. Wish me luck!