T-shirt Dress Outfit

Today is our final Project Run & Play sew along submission. The theme was Signature Style, and we incorporated some of each of our signature style into the final product, a t-shirt dress outfit. If you’ve read our About Us page, you know that Allegra’s special signature talent is embroidery. A favorite adopted aunt taught her how to embroider years ago, and she has really taken it to the highest heights. Every year she enters an embroidered project to 4H, and has won top honors with each submission. The requirements get more stringent every year, and her submissions get more elaborate! Finally this past year, the beloved lady who taught her to embroider admitted that Allegra has surpassed her own ability! She embroidered this Asian inspired fish:

We can’t wait to see what she makes this year. But that is all related because she embroidered an embellishment for this week’s Project Run & Play outfit.

She started with a leftover piece of this tablecloth we used for Annie’s German Gretl costume. (By the way, we won a prize for her costume over at Elegance and Elephants. The drawings for the Sew Along competition were random, but we’ll take the prize anyway, thank you very much!) And she embroidered onto it this fan.

Not only is she fantabulous at embroidery, she’s very fast, and this took her only about 2 hours!

Aria’s special signature style around here is her knitting. She basically taught herself how to knit from books and youtube videos, and is always curled up somewhere reading and knitting. (Yes, both at the same time…this is amazing to me because whenever I try to knit, I need both eyes, both hands, my tongue and sometimes an extra helping hand or two!)

So we had this hat that was the most adorable knit hat ever, and Annie wore and wore until it was really a little too snug on her. You can’t really tell by the before photo, but it was really tight! And due to much wearing and loving on her part, it had lost one tie.

So we turned it upside down and made it into a purse! It was very easy, all I had to do was hand sew the ear flaps down over the opening to make it smaller, cut off the one errant tie, and add the handles Aria knit for me. She also is very fast, this only took her about 1 hour!

The main part of the outfit involved a skirt (of course!) that we picked up from the boutique rack at Goodwill for $4.00.

It is an Aeropostle skirt with lots of cute details like pin tucks and hem embroidered details. It was too short for anyone around here to wear (especially in the c-o-l-d weather we’ve been having) but great “bones” nevertheless.

And the second item was a t-shirt I bought for Aria without having her along to try it on. It was only $1 at Big Lots, and I thought it would fit her, but when I got it home, it was much to tight around for her, and way too long for Annie! T-shirt dress time! So I shortened the t-shirt by about 2 inches, cut off the top of the skirt and sewed the two together. I wasn’t really happy with the way the two looked just like that because I was going for a more drop waist effect, so I asked Allegra for suggestions. She came up with the lace trim and bow.

Perfect! The last step was to weave red ribbon through the embroidered hem along the bottom of the skirt, tying the two together.

Then, since the weather is still chilly, Annie was going to need to layer it up, so we grabbed a Land’s End girl’s Jacket that both Allegra and Aria had worn.

Now if you have anything from Land’s End, you know it’s staying power, and this jacket was no different. In fact, the wearings had given it a faded, stone-washed appearance which was awesome!

But I wanted to update it for Annie a little bit, and there was a hole in one pocket that needed attention. Enter some felt flower pins that took me about 30 minutes to make. This was my signature style addition…I got lots of practice making these a few years ago when I made three ABC quiet books, and for the letter V page I made a vase with felt flowers!

The finished flowers can be moved anywhere on the jacket to change the look or cover up the little hole!

We are so pleased with this little t-shirt dress ensemble, with it’s special signature touches from each of us to Annie.

Annie’s signature style addition was her great smiles and poses!

Allegra took these photos in our barn on the hay bales!

Annie just loves the purse and filling it with different treasures makes her so happy!

The back view on this little cutie!

Annie is looking forward to wearing this dress for months to come!

Well, leave us a comment about our signature style t-shirt dress. And visit Project Run & Play to see all the great submissions, both contestants and sew along participants!