Girl’s Tank Dress
My sister-in-law and her friend have this great sewing blog, Made on Maple, where they keep track of all their sewing projects. They even have some great tutorials. Most of the projects, frankly, scare me. I’m pretty much a beginner sewer, though I could probably do more than I think I can if I would just try. So, I visit the blog regularly for inspiration, and to dream about “someday”.
Recently, Annee posted this cute tank dress that she made for my nieces, who are twins. They are the same age as my daughter. When I saw it, I knew this would be a perfect project for some of that fabric I got from Korea- mainly, because it seemed simple enough. Here’s what I made:
All I had to go on were these directions and a picture:
I measured across the bottom of the tank top then doubled it to get the circumference. Then, I double that figure. For example, I believe the circumference was 22, which meant I was going for a total for 44 inches across (in total). Since I was going to use 4 different fabrics I wanted to use, I think that worked out to be 6.6 inches wide per stripe (trying to take into account the amount of seam allowance I wanted). I believe I cut
them 19 inches long. It fell right about to her knees, if not slightly below. I liked the length. I didn’t have any step-by-step pictures or directions, but it seemed fairly obvious how to construct it. Once I had all my strips sewn together, I joined the two ends to make a circle. I then gathered it to fit the bottom of the tank top. (By the way, below is my new favorite sewing shortcut. If you think gathering takes too long, or you have problems with your threads breaking, TRY THIS! I don’t know why no one ever taught me this before:) 
Anyway, I finished off the dress with a pleated ruffle. I simply sewed a piece of fabric into a tube, pressed it flat, then turned the ends under to finish them. Then I pressed the fabric into pleats that were 3/4 inch apart, pinned it to the tank top, and sewed a straight line down the middle of the pleats.
I love how the dress turned out, and so does my daughter!
Linking to some parties- go party along!
