The Shirty Babydoll Top

I love wearing dresses, and I have lots of them, but I'm typically in jeans. For my lifestyle jeans and shirts are so much more practical. So with the extra men's shirt I had for The Refashioners 2015, I decided to make myself a shirt, something I would get more wear out of than a dress.

I started out with this shirt. I bought it to go with the orange striped shirt I made my shirty dress out of. I figured I would need 2 shirts to make that dress from. So when I didn't, I had an extra shirt, and no idea what I was going to do with it.

Then I stumbled across this "dress" on pinterest. I immediately knew this was what I would turn the extra blue shirt into.

I put the shirt on my dress form. I pinned along the sides where it would need to be taken in and cut a new neckline.

Then I laid the shirt out and cut off the excess fabric. The fabric I cut off the bottom got cut in half lengthwise again to make the 2 ruffles out of. I also cut off the button placket, to re-install later.

I sewed up the new side seams on the shirt top. Now, I had just taken the original shirt in at the side seams and left the original sleeves attached. This meant the shoulders were really big on me. I fixed this by making 3 pin tucks on each shoulder. I thought they were a fun feminine touch. 

To trim the bottom of the sleeves I added this wide vintage knit lace I had on hand. I love the leafy lace design!

 Next I gathered up the top flounce and sewed it to the shirt top. Since I cut both flounces from the bottom of the original shirt, they were the same width. This meant I couldn't gather the bottom flounce onto the top one. The bottom flounce needed more width. So I seam-ripped the side seams, and sewed in the bottom of the original sleeves (cuffs already removed) in to get that width. I gathered up that flounce and sewed it on to the first.

Lastly I sewed the button placket back on and bound the neckline. Then it was done! Like with the orange dress all the seams in this shirt are either french or felled. I'm getting better at this whole finishing my seams thing!

I love my new feminine shirt! It's great for wearing to work and other everyday activities. 

On a completely unrelated note, look at how big Domino has gotten! I love this boy, he will make a great herd sire next year! I look forward to getting lots of Sombrita granddaughters out of him!

Ocarina decided Domino shouldn't get all the attention, so she came over to the fence to get some loving too. Now, back to the shirt, I really like the sleeve button placket detail at the hem. It's unexpected, but doesn't scream "I shouldn't be here." It's a fun design feature, that just got added so that I would have enough fabric. This is one of the reasons I have loved doing these shirt refashions. Figuring out how to make something from a limited supply of fabric, while using as many of the original features of the shirt as possible. It really gets the creative juices flowing! 

I have two shirts left to refashion, and I'm very excited about what I have planned for them. Once they are done I may have to get a few more shirts to refashion. Only not this month, because my September sewing goal is "buy no fabric." Shirts to refashion count as fabric. The Refashioners 2015 only runs through September 28th, so anything I make next month won't be for the challenge. But hey, one can never have too many basic button downs in their wardrobe right? Even if those basic button downs have been turned into not so basic dresses and shirts.