Monday, September 8, 2014

Pillowcase Dresses and Football

Pillowcase dresses are all the rage for little girls, so creating them for football fans seemed natural.  

The appliqué and monogram  took longer than the whole dress construction process!  I It was done first on the block of fabric to be used as the largest portion of the dress.  While it was being monogrammed, I cut the two bottom bands to the same width of the main body and folded them in half and ironed them so I had a finished bottom edge on both.  Note that the first band (the paw prints) is smaller in width than the bottom band (polk a dot) so that it creates two layers of folded finished edges.  
After the applique was completed, I made a sandwich of the main fabric (chevron in this case) RS up, the paw print band next with raw edges together on bottom of chevron, then last I put the polk a dot band on top with raw edges together.  Then I serged all three together at the same time! I did this for the front and back pieces.

Then fold the seam toward the top and press.  (The bands should line up, from this angle it looks like they are not, but they are!) The side seams are sewn on the machine AFTER serging the sides and top of the front and back pieces as a FINISHING seam. DO NOT SERGE THE SIDE SEAMS or there will be no place for little arms!!!!
Measure down from the top (in my case for a 12 mo size it was 7inches) .  Machine stitch the sides from your mark down to the hem.  
Iron the remaining(armhole) seam the same width as the side seam and topstitch. Serge across the top (neckline) to finish the raw edge. Then iron the top neckline down 1.5 inches for the casing.  Add a cute ribbon and viola!  A cute pillowcase dress!!

War Eagle and Happy Stitching!
Renee

PS…All tutorials, information and images are the property of Renee Galloway at Ney Ney's Nest and are intended for personal use only.  Feel free to re-blog, pin, share with attribution to Ney Ney's Nest.  For all other purposes, please contact me at reneegalloway@me.com.  Thanks!