Monday, August 15, 2011

Color Block Dress

Last week I showed my Dolly's rainbow dress, this week is a colorblock dress tutorial for MOMMY!!

Here is an easy comfortable dress, whether you use it to run to the kids' soccer practice or to the beach as a cover up! It's SO easy to make!

Supplies needed:
  • Remember how over the past few years shirts have gotten longer (which I LOVE by the way), well if you are like me, then you have a drawer/closet full of those too short shirts left hanging around. Grab one!
  • You'll need a small amount of accent fabric,
  • about a yard of skirt fabric.
*I used approximately 3/8" seams throught the dress

Instructions:
1.  Cut your tank top at the height that you want the dress to be, accounting for seam allowance. I cut my dress 4" below the arm hole.

2.  Cut your middle band. I cut mine at 3", finished band ended up being between 2 and 2.5". You need to cut two pieces for bands, add a seam allowance so that the band is the same width as the tank top.
3. Sew the side seams of the middle band together.
4.  Attach the middle band to the tank top.

5. I purchased 60" knit and used the full width for the skirt. Cut in half and sew the two 30" wide pieces together to form the skirt.

6.  Set your stitch to as long as it will go and stitch a gathering stitch around the top of the skirt. Gather and pin to the skirt.

7. Stitch the skirt to the middle band using a knit stitch or zig-zag stitch to allow give to it so the seams don't break when it stretches!

The middle band should match width to the tank top, and the skirt is gathered as its attached to the middle band.

Use another dress that you like the length of as a guide to determine the length of this dress. Add an inch for hems before cutting. Or, try it on and measure how long you want the dress to be.
Always remember the simple rule: Measure Twice, Cut Once...maybe even try it on pinned prior to cutting...I did not do this, and ended up with my dress about an inch too short! HA! It was the perfect FINAL length, and therefore I didn't hem it :)  Luckily knit doesn't frame, it lays great, and so off I go!

*If you want to hem the bottom, then fold up 1/2", fold over another 1/2" and sew the seam for a nice clean edge!
had you seen my face in all the pictures my 5 year old so graciously took of me...you would have cut the head off of the picture too :)
** Check out the fabulous blogs I'm linking up with, I've listed them here: http://itssewforyou.blogspot.com/p/linky-partys.html
Including: http://todayscreativeblog.net/

6 comments:

  1. Cute tutorial, it is beautiful and easy. thanks.
    http://make-handmade.com

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  2. Super cute! Thanks for sharing :-)

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  3. I've wanted to know how to do this, so thank you very much for sharing! It's so adorable!

    By the way, I am hosting my very FIRST link party and I would love to have you link this to it--
    http://southernlovely.blogspot.com/2011/08/show-share-1.html

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  4. Love these dresses. So simple and cute!

    Andrea @ TheTrainToCrazy.com

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