Nesting: Suspender Dress

I have a bit of an announcement to make. I am going to extend my Nesting series for another week!

I just had so many baby projects piling up in the queue and even another last minute addition to my guest post list that I couldn’t resist adding another week.

Most of next week will be my own stuff but I do have one more amazing sewing giveaway in the works, so stick around.

Now onto today’s business.

This is sort of a mini-tutorial really because it’s just like the Easy Baby Skirts but with straps. Hence why I call it the suspender dress.

I hope no one is getting bored of all these dresses against a white wall. 🙂

Anyway…It is also a lot like my Curly Sue dress tutorial.

I originally wanted to sew big buttons on it too, but just couldn’t bring myself to do for comfort reasons. Maybe I’ll add them later.

Take a T-shirt.

FYI: I should add when sewing with T-shirt/knit fabric, you want to use a stretch stitch, a zig zag stitch, a double needle, or a serger. You will see that most of my seams are sewn with a straight stitch as sort of a basting stitch before I run it through my serger. This is because I have already serged a pin {BIG expensive NO NO} in the short time I have owned my serger. So the straight stitch is my precautionary measure to make sure I don’t have to fork out big bucks for new blades again.

Cut pieces similar to how you cut them with the Easy Baby Skirt.

I used this onsie as a guide. It says 3-6 months, but as I will explain in a second, it is a newborn/ 0-3 month dress.

When you cut your fabric you also want to make sure that you cut it with the grain. I cut it against the grain purely for design reasons {I wanted to switch up the stripes} which shortchanged the stretch of the bodice. I don’t know what I was thinking. It made this 3-6 month dress a newborn dress because it just won’t stretch enough. So…don’t make my mistake and cut with the grain! 🙂 Don’t know which way that should be? Stretch your fabric and you’ll know. You want the direction that gives you the most stretch.

For this newborn/ 0-3 month size dress:

You need four bodice pieces about 4 inches by 7 inches {but you can tailor this to your liking} and 2 strap pieces 2 1/2 inches by about 8 inches.

You also need a skirt piece. I used the width of the T-shirt and about 16 inches of length which I folded in half. The idea was to make it a slight bubble skirt with no hem {nice :)}.

Serge/zig zag your strap pieces on the fold and turn right side out.

Then measure how far apart you want the straps on the dress.

Pin into two bodice pieces that are sandwiching the straps, right sides facing.

Sew/serge.

Repeat for the other bodice pieces but have them closer together and criss-crossed. Turn right side out. You should have a Roman numeral ten/ X looking thing.

Open the front and back bodice pieces up and pin them right sides together. Be careful to keep the straps away from the sides so they don’t get sewn in, in the next step.

Sew/serge up the sides.

Now you have the top of your dress.

Take your skirt piece. I serged the two edges together. Because I fold the skirt piece in on itself there is no wrong or right side. If you didn’t do that, you need to turn it WRONG side out.

Then insert your dress top piece.

You can gather the skirt and and then pin or pleat it with pins like I did here.

Zig-zag around or sew and then serge.

Turn it all right sides out.

Voila!

This is a suspender dress so it meant to be worn over a shirt or onsie.

If you want it to be a stand alone dress, then I suggest you add a rise to the front of the bodice so you don’t have a baby cleavage problem.

I also made this 3-6 month dress with some knit scraps for the top and one fat quarter for the skirt piece. I made sure the bodice was cut with the grain so it’s nice and stretchy!

Simple. Inexpensive. Nothing you would see in the stores. I love it.

I hope you’re having a lovely day. 🙂

Tomorrow I have something that is {finally} not a dress or a skirt but is plenty girly. See you then!