Wednesday, May 2, 2018

A Dress-Extender From A Pillowcase?

Hello Readers. Have you ever had a dress that was a little too short?


This light blue shirt dress was great but it was a little too short on my tall daughter. I usually need to shorten clothes because I am so short. My daughter has the opposite problem. She is tall and clothes can be too short on her. She needed a quick and easy dress extender/under skirt to wear with this blue dress.
This dress is a bit shorter on the sides, just like a typical men's shirt. That made it even shorter on my tall daughter. That's is where the dress extender comes in. It would add a little coverage for this short dress.


We were discussing the dress and I came across this pillowcase. (I was folding laundry.) It is a standard size case but it is made of knit material, like a T-shirt. The soft material got me thinking. It would make a soft skirt. Would it work under the blue shirt dress?


I cut off the closed end of the pillowcase. I was going to keep the open end of the case and use the finished edge as my hem. That would save time and effort. (I should call this blog "The Lazy Seamstress", because that's what I am.) I did some measuring so it would fit my daughter and work for the blue dress. It couldn't be too long or too short.


I folded the cut edge in and under to make a casing for an elastic waistband. It was an easy way to make a skirt and it would be comfortable to wear.  I cut a length of elastic that fit around my daughter's waist. I fit the elastic through the casing, connected the ends, and stitched the casing shut.


Here is a look at this simple white skirt. I could have added something to make the actual dress longer but decided to make this because it could be used with and under other things. 


This skirt fit well and it just peeks out from the blue dress and it adds a little coverage on the sides. That was just what my daughter wanted.  We didn't add trim or anything that would distract from the blue dress. It would be easy to add some lace or something like that to dress it up if you wanted to.


Thanks for reading this blog, I love all my readers. Now, go make something fun for yourself.

*Year end update- My daughter cleaned out her closet and gave this outfit back to me. It was nice to wear in the heat of summer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A cute shirtdress, and the white underskirt will be useful with other tops too. I had the same problem, and my solution was to sew on to the original shirt the bottom part of another menswear shirt in a complementary fabric. Somehow the sides and front plackets exactly lined up. The dress still had a shirt tail hem, but the dress was quite a bit longer with extra shirt bottom sewed on. I also used some of the fabric from the second shirt to make a tie v-neckline, and a band on the short sleeves.

I Can Work With That said...

That is a great idea to keep the curves of the hem intact but add some length. Very clever! Thanks for the idea!
Happy Birthday!
Chickie