MAKING THE FIRST PILLOWCASE DRESS (A TUTORIAL)

I recently decided to support a special project by sewing dresses for girls. You can read how this sewing for charity project all started in Part One.  Find out all about a pillowcase dress and what they are.  And what made me decide to sew so many of them.

In Part Two – “Ready, Set, Sew”, my fabric arrived and I found a few patterns to use to make this cute little pillowcase dress.

This week, I had the opportunity to make the first pillowcase dress and share my version in a tutorial for those who are following along.

Let’s start stitching!

The charity

When searching for pillowcase dress patterns, I stumbled upon this fabulous charity, Little Dresses for Africa (LFDA) that believes that every girl in the world should own at least one dress.   Their mission is to plant in the hearts of little girls that they are worthy through the distribution of handmade little dresses, made of pillowcases by loving hands from all over the world.

The first dress

For the past few weeks, while waiting for my fabric to arrive, I played around with various patterns to determine what I liked and combined a couple of ideas to come up with the first pillowcase dress. Originally, I thought I would make a few different designs, but I really love the style of my combinations, I think I will just stick to the one pattern.

Rather than making my dresses all one color, my pattern tutorial includes a band on the bottom with straps that match the band. This idea is thanks to Melissa from We All Sew. I had to change the pattern to use elastic instead of ribbon at the top of the front and back due to the LFDA rules. And I will show you how to make your own coordinating straps.

The tutorial for the pillowcase dress also includes instructions for making a dress of all one color. I have attempted to include metric sizes as well for all the non-American sewists.

PILLOWCASE DRESS SIZING CHARTS

Using the guidelines from LFDA, and a few tutorials I found on making these dresses, I came up with the following guidelines for sizing these dresses. Remember, these dresses are made to fit all different sizes of girls, so you do not need to be precise.

The following chart will be helpful throughout this tutorial:

FABRIC REQUIREMENTS PER PILLOWCASE DRESS

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• Main color – Finished length of dress (plus 2 inches (5 cm) if not using a band)
• Band color – 5 to 7 inches (13-18 cm)
• Ties (optional) – 5 inches (13 cm). If not making your own ties, you will need 2 yards (2 m) of ½ inch (200 mm) double fold bias tape.
• ½ (200 mm) elastic – approx. ½ yd (.5 m) per dress
• Coordinating thread
• Download and print the armhole template

I got all my fabulous fabric and thread at Connecting Threads for less than $5.00 per yard in their Clearance section!! The fabric is a high quality quilting cotton that is so reasonable and I absolutely love them. And I ALWAYS stock up on their threads. You can see all my fabric choices in Part Two

CUTTING THE FABRIC

If you are making more than one dress it is easy to cut all the dresses from the one piece of fabric at a time.

If you are not making a band at the bottom, cut the dress 2 inches (5 cm) larger than the finished size required to allow for the hem and top casing.

When using a band, cut a strip of coordinating fabric 5” (13 cm) wide by the WOF. If you want a wider band, you may cut 6-7” (15-18 cm) wide but note that this will make the dress ½ to 1 inch (1-2 cm) longer. As the finished band is approximately 2 inches, you should cut your main fabric to the length of the dress you desire. The band will compensate for the hem and casing.

To make my dresses, I had two yards each of two different coral colored fabric and a coordinating flower fabric. I cut 3 dresses from the flowers on white background fabric, 18 inches, 24 inches and 30 inches. I also cut 4 dresses; two 16 inches and two 20 inches from the coral with white flower fabric. And I cut the bands and straps from the coral dots. This will make 7 dresses – 3 small, 3 medium and one large.

Using a rotary cutter, cut all the fabrics the desired length using the width of the fabric (WOF). Do NOT cut off the selvages.

SEWING THE PILLOWCASE DRESS

BODY

Hem the band as follows:

• Press edge under ½ inch (1 cm)
• Fold to cover the seam which attached the band to the body. Press and pin in place
• Stitch on RIGHT side. I learned a lesson here – I stitched the band on the wrong side first but had to redo as it was ugly on the right side. Stitching from the right side in the “ditch” of the seam, made it look neater and much prettier.

TOP

Fold the dress matching the side seams and using the template, cut out the armholes. Do not throw away, you may use the fabric to create some decorations. (I will come up with some ideas in a later post)

To create the casing for the elastic, fold down ¼” (6 mm) on top of both the front and back. Press. Fold again 1 inch (2.5 cm) and press. Sew close to the fold to create the casing.

Cut 2 pieces of elastic per chart. Using a safety pin, pull the elastic through the casing taking care not to twist the elastic. Secure close to armhole edge.

ARMHOLES AND TIES

The bias tape will be used to make your ties. Cut your bias tape to the size required for the ties per chart. If you wish to make your own ties, see below.

Open one side of the bias tape or tie. If you look closely at purchased bias tape one side is slightly longer than the other. This is so the longer end can easily fold over the shorter end to hide your stitching. Therefore, you should open the shorter side now.

Find the middle by folding the tie in half lengthwise. Place the middle of the tie on the middle of the armhole on the WRONG side of the fabric. Pin to armhole matching edges. Sew on the fold line of the tape/tie. Clip the armhole seam to ¼ inch (6 mm).

Fold the tie to the RIGHT side of the armhole covering the stitching and pin.
Starting at one end, edgestitch across the end of the tie, down the length of the tie and RIGHT side of armhole to the other end.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TIES

Cut a two pieces of fabric 2-1/2 inches (6 cm) wide by WOF.
Fold in half lengthwise with WRONG sides facing and press. Open and fold each end to the center (pressing line). Press.
Fold back in half and press again. Cut to length indicated in the chart.

DONE THE FIRST DRESS!! ISN”T IT PRETTY?? I LOVE IT SO MUCH, I WILL NOT CHANGE A THING WITH THE REST OF THE DRESSES (OTHER THAN SIZES OF COURSE). This one is a medium.

I have some pieces of leftover fabric that I may use to decorate the dress. Plus, I have nineteen more dresses and some shorts to make. Stay tuned to see how they turned out.

Have you joined in?  Please share your projects with me on Facebook or Pinterest.  I have made the Pillowcase Dresses a group board so please send me your request to join and post your pictures!