Little Girl's Sweater Dress Tutorial

A few months ago, I ran across a tutorial for a toddler's sweater dress here, at Smashed Peas and Carrots. This chick has a fabulous blog with lots of fun DIYs for the kids! When I decided to make a few for N, I discovered that I could simplify it by several steps and make a larger dress for a pre-schooler. It would also work as a tunic size for older kids.

I started with a goofy short sleeved sweater that I would never wear and found a dress that fit N well.

 Trim sweater on the sides, leaving 1/2" seam allowance.

Trim down arms to a little girl width. I left mine wider, so I didn't measure, but you can lay the dress' sleeves on top to get a measurement for the width and length. Since the sweater I used was short sleeved, I didn't have to worry about length. Make sure you follow the line of the original sleeve, rather than cut it off square.

Choose a stretchy stitch on your sewing machine. I have a Husqvarna Emerald, and it has a "stretchy" setting, so I used that. A simple zig zag stitch would work just fine, though.

Fold the sleeves so that they're inside out and pin the seam. When sewing, be sure to leave 1/2" unsewn at the armpit side to attach to the dress!

Turn the body of your sweater inside out and attach your arms. There are two ways to pin the arms on. You can leave them inside out and pin to the dress like Smashed Peas and Carrots did, or you can turn them right side out and lay them inside the dress to sew. I decided to try the latter this time, and I thought it worked out really well. I tried to take a good picture to illustrate what I did. Basically I lined up the edge of the arm with the edge of the dress and pinned from the inside of the arm.

It seemed a little less awkward for me to sew it this way, but either way works just fine. Start at the armpit and sew up, over the shoulder, and then back down to the armpit, rotating the sweater as you go.

Ta-daa! This is the finished arm and unfinished side seam. To sew the side seams, leave the dress inside out, pin the sides secure and just sew from armpit to the bottom hem! I always have a little hole in the armpits where the seams don't meet completely which I hand sew up with just a few stitches.

Here's a shot of the finished dress! I've found that sweaters are very forgiving, so you don't have to be too exact. I'm not a very good sewer, so I leave a wide seam allowance and then I go back to trim it up. Definitely give the original tutorial a look if anything's confusing.

N loved it and wore it to school the next day.

Haha, I can NOT get a serious picture out of this girl!

Nice and stretchy to play in.

OK, all done. Can we go outside?!