{Domestic Deadline} Men's Shirt to Dress Re-Fashion

Today, Emily from Domestic Deadline is here to share a fun tutorial with us. She’s got a great upcycle project she’s going to show us how to do. I love upcycle projects. The whole “I made it for FREE!” aspect makes me all kinds of happy. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to figure out how to refashion things, so I’m glad Emily will be showing us how to do this. Let’s get to it!

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Hi! I’m Emily from Domestic Deadline. I work part time in construction, cook from scratch and am always attempting to decorate my house both functionally and beautifully. Of course, there is always some sort of craft project in the way of the cleaning and other domestic duties. Today I’d like to share one of my favorite upcycling projects with you. I like to have some comfy dresses to throw on in spring and summer when I don’t have to wear grubby work clothes and don’t want to just wear shorts and t-shirts. Sometimes just throwing a dress on can make you feel so much better. Sometimes making the dress makes you feel even better, especially when someone asks where you got it from! First find a really big men’s dress shirt that you like the pattern of, the bigger the better. Here is what I started with

Time to deconstruct! I used a seam ripper and took off the pocket and arms. I could have just cut the arms off but decided by taking the french seam out, putting the arms back together would be easier, and it was. No need to iron (I’ll do anything to avoid ironing).

Then slice the top half off. I measured down about 3 inches from the bottom of the arm hole. I probably should have gone another inch, but I think it ended up working. Watch out for the buttons, you may have to adjust where you cut

Now cut the arm open and cut out the largest piece possible, like so:

Set those pieces aside, time to go back to the top section. Fold under the edges and sew up the arm holes. If you need to bring it in, now is the time. My seam ripper is acting as an arrow, this is where I sewed to make the arm hole shorter and bring it in across the front.

Next we are going to attach the largest sections from the sleeves. Don’t worry about sewing them together just yet. Even them up across the front and the back.

Once the two pieces are attached, sew from under the arm straight down to the bottom. This makes it lay nicer than if you sew the two sleeve pieces into a tube first.

Now we reattach the bottom portion of the shirt. I missed a few pictures here, but here’s the lowdown. Line up the buttons, the back centers and the side seams and pin those places. Since your skirt piece is probably wider than the top portion, add a few pleats by pinning them into place evenly across the front and back.

Here are the pleats:

I basted all my seams and then serged but you can also zig zag to finish them. You can stop here if you like. I wanted the dress to have a bit more shape and since there was no way to match up the stripes at the sides and still have enough fabric, I wanted to conceal this a bit. Mark off 2.5-3 inches on either side of the side seam.

Shirr several rows on both sides. I originally started in the middle of the panel but decided to shirr the whole thing, making it lay nice and flat across the front of me, not adding any extra width to my middle!

Now it’s a dress, well, at least for someone who isn’t almost 6 feet tall like me!

If you are tall like me or want a longer dress, cut the bottom off straight and using a coordinating fabric add a band as thick as you like across the bottom. Mine was a 6 inch strip, but once stitched on and hemmed, about 5 inches show.

Tip: Sew the bottom half of the dress closed along the buttons, this way you don’t have to worry about one coming undone and exposing something you don’t want seen!

Please stop by and visit me over at Domestic Deadline and check out:

Some of my recipes
Attempts at organizing
Or various craft projects

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What a super cute dress! I might have to try this… that would be a perfect style for a nursing dress with the buttons and all. Thanks so much for sharing this, Emily! Go check out even more awesome stuff on Domestic Deadline and tell Emily “hi!”

This post was written by Krista and originally appeared on While He Was Napping.

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