Tutorial: Cheaters Guide to a Fancy Dress!

My mom bought this girls' size 12 skirt home from Goodwill for $.99 the other day because she thought I might be able to make something out of it. Thanks, mom! Can you say...cute little jumper with pick-ups?? I just sort of made this up as I went along, so I'm sure there are lots of different variations you could do, but here's how I did this one....

The skirt before:

1) I measured it up to another similarly styled dress that my daughter had, and cut off the excess. If your skirt has elastic like this one, make sure you put a pin in the elastic first, so it stays put! If it has a zipper, be sure not to cut that side off.

2) Using the part that you cut off, cut two sections for straps, using another of your child's dress as a guide for length. Mine were 7"x12" unfolded.

3) Fold the strap pieces over, right sides together, and pin.

4) Do the same with your dress piece, and sew down the pinned sides of all three pieces. Hem the tops and bottom's of the straps.

5) Using your machine's gathering stitch, sew along the top, bottom, and middle of the straps. Pull top string to gather in all three places. Then sew a regular strait stitch across the middle gathered section on each strap, to hold in place.

6) Turn dress inside out, and pin straps to the dress, being sure they are not too close or far apart. Sew on.
7) To put in the pick-ups, gather the fabric (by machine, or just by hand-scrunching), then sew back and forth across the gathered part. Do this in however many places you'd like! I did 2 in back, and 2 in front.

8) Hand stitch on bows, or buttons, and whatever you want. Or just leave them plain, it's cute that way, too!

All done! Looks like you spent all day on it! (It'll be our secret) :o)

*You could do this for an older girl, too, using an adult sized skirt!