Semi-Fail Toddler Dress

Remember awhile back I said I wanted to try to make a toddler dress for a little 4-year old I know? I finished it the other day, and have decided to call it a semi-fail.

I managed to salvage it by adding ribbon  around the waistline where I horribly mangled the gathering of the fabric. Well, actually I managed to do the gathering part okay; it was the sewing of the gathering part that gave me problems. The shirt kept bunching up while I was sewing and I didn't realize it until it was too late.

Here is what I started this project with:

A shirt from Wal-mart and a half yard of fabric, along with instructions found here and here. 

Here is what I learned from this project:

1.  Sew very SLOWLY and CAREFULLY when you are sewing the gathered fabric to your shirt.

2.  If you use the sew-two-lines-of-stitching gathering technique - after you sew it to the shirt, you can remove those two lines of stitching so that you don't see it on the front. (My SIL told me this after I had already butchered it!)

3.  If you've never sewn gathers before, you might want to practice first on an old shirt and scrap fabric.

As you can see in the photo above, I have another one of these to make. Here's hoping the next one comes out better!