Traditions and Tutorials

Ah, Sundays.

Despite the fact that I have spent half of today reading for my abnormal psychology test tomorrow morning, it's been a great day. This morning when we woke up, J* asked if we were going to have the "traditional" Sunday breakfast of chocolate pancakes. I won't lie, it was on my mind too, and it seems we are eating these all too often. Why not make it a weekly tradition? We need to start a few traditions of our own anyways...Yum!

Anyways, I had two main goals this weekend. Make some maternity clothes - there is absolutely nowhere to shop here, and maternity clothes are expensive anyway - and to get my homework done for my test tomorrow.


Back in January I bought a couple dresses that I could "grow into". I had the intention of fixing this dress, but just never got around to it until I realized everything is getting too small for me!

So, I started my venture into clothesmaking with this already made dress that just needed a few alterations. I took pictures along the way so I could show you how I did it!

 

So here is the original dress. I wish i had a picture of me wearing it so you could see how awful it was. The bottom panel of fabric made it so long and wide I felt like I was wearing a mu-mu, and one of the straps is broken. 

 

The first step was to cut off the bottom panel to make the dress a little shorter. I thought I could try and make it into sleeves somehow, since I hate feeling naked in a strappy dress unless its a million degrees outside (which it never is here...)

 

Next I cut the flowery piece away from the zebra print. The flowers will be the strap and the zebra will be the sleeve.

 

Pin the right sides together and sew to attach the strap to the sleeve.

 

It looked like this afterward.

 

Then I hemmed the edge of the sleeve.

 

Then I pinned the strap to the bust of the dress, right sides together, and sewed.

 

It looked like this when done.  

 

Then I sewed the back of the strap to the back of the dress. This part was tricky becasue the back of the dress is elastic. While sewing, I had to pull the dress taught so the strap would be in the right place when I was wearing it. I had to take the stitches out a couple times to get it just right, but being a beginner I didn't expect this to go perfect!

After that, I pinned and sewed the sleeves in, I just eyeballed it. 

 

Here is the finished product! (and a 27 week belly photo!) Good length and no pesky bra straps showing! 

I have a couple other things I want to make, so hopefully they turn out just as well and I will have some comfortable clothes that will last the next three months.

Do you have any fun family traditions or sewing projects?