Recycled Dress for LBB Challenge

Here are some pics of my first Sienna dress for the LBB & Dharma Trading Design Challenge.

I'm so glad I posted about it earlier...it really kept me on the ball with this project and I knew I couldn't back out. This dress was actually a blast to make and I love how it looks on Little Lu. I had the perfect amount of scraps left to make bitty baby a dress. How convenient, especially since Little Lu is 132 X more likely to wear it and wear it often if her miniature counterpart has one.



She has worn it twice already, once with leggings and once with warmers. Both not without TONS of compliments!




If you aren't thoroughly impressed yet, 1) you don't know my previous sewing skills, and 2) you haven't seen how truly HIDEOUS these shirts were to begin with. These .99 shirts at Goodwill had some potential, I thought. This is UPcycling in its greatest form, I think!



There are tons of things I like about this pattern. 1) It is very user friendly with lots of pics and descriptions. Trust me. I have tried store bought patterns. Simplicity does not always live up to it's name. I just don't know the "lingo" and I have a Master's degree :) Ashley from LBB has never followed store bought patterns either, and talks in language that we all understand. It is also accompanied by pictures of each step and little alterations along the way. There is even a troubleshooting section that was handy for me at times. Take that, Simplicity :) 2) I love love love the concept of using recycled shirts to make dresses. For one thing, they are cheap. I spent $3 on shirts for this dress, and had enough fabric to mess up/cut new parts AND make another dress. How many yards of cute clearance fabric can you get for $3? Also, these old shirts have stood the test of time. No worrying about the color fading or the fabric shrinking. Don't let that solid black collar fool you, it was the reverse side of a very worn t shirt collar.

I went round and round about my added decoration. I initially wanted to use fabric paint to make a freezer paper stencil. However, I have smeared the paint before when setting the design and was way too paranoid about doing that again. A friend suggested that I do her initial, and then I decided to give jewels a try. I actually did a reverse freezer paper stencil for this and it turned out great, I think. Ironically, I had not planned on doing a dress for Bitty Baby at this point and the little "L" was just a freezer paper stencil trial. When the doll's dress came together, I decided to use the little "L" for this one.

That's my first entry. Here is just a preview of my second. I like it just as much as the first since it's more the flavor of our Texas family. JD is a staple around here.

But that entry is for another day....Bitty baby's is in the works :)