Project Run & Play week2 + the Lisa dress tutorial

The “Hand-me-down” makeover! My personal favourite theme in this Project Run & Play season. Every time I walk through the thrift store, I see up-cycling projects everywhere. I can never leave without buying something! ;) For this week’s challenge I choose to sew  a dress (for Lisa) from a dull grey man’s shirt. My personal mission: using all typical elements of this shirt in my new garment. Next to this challenge, I tried not to use new pattern pieces: I recycled all pattern pieces in this dress from my own patterns. Nothing new added!

This is basically what I did: I kept the collar that’s now a little bit oversized. I did shorten the shoulder seams. Used the bodice of my Lotta dress and added a skirt (this one is just as wide as the fabric). I placed the Louisa sleeve on the lower part of the shirt’s sleeve, but turned it in order to position the closure at the top.  The sleeve was too wide, so I’ve sewn a dart to make it exactly as wide as my pattern piece. Didn’t want to take of the cuffs, since I tried to sew as less new seams as possible. I added my new sleeve to the dress and closed the side seam! Easy as that. To turn this dress into a fashionable garment, I added in-seam pockets (again from my Lotta dress) and a small belt sewn from a more colourful fabric. Recycled from an old skirt from Essentiel (a Belgian fashion brand).

To accentuate what I did, I topstitched all new seams with some ‘Compagnie-m-yellow’ thread. I didn’t just top-stitch, but used a very ‘unusual’ way. I started at the hem, then moved upwards at the side seam, at once, I did the sleeve and then went downwards again to the back hem. I’ve sewn all the way to the other side and repeated these steps. Without stopping I top-stitched all new seams! My personal signature to this up-cycling project.

This yellow is the main colour also of the little cardigan. I just copied the curve of my own Julia sweater to cut the sleeves. To make the outfit complete, I’ve sewn some super cute leg warmers. Both recycled from an old cardigan of mine. Lisa’s first reaction when she saw this cardigan: Now I have the same one as you! Too small to realise that it was actually mine! Super cute! :)

When you like my 2nd project Run & Play outfit, you can vote for me on their website! Just click HERE.

I added recycled buttons from the shirt onto the cardigan.

Do you feel like making this Lisa dress yourself? I wrote a detailed tutorial that you can find HERE. 16 pages that will guide you to turn ‘little ghosts’ into ‘little princesses’! :)

Don’t you have my patterns yet and feel like making this Lisa dress? Until the 1st of October I’m offering you a 10% discount on the Louisa & Lotta dress patterns, that I’ve used in this tutorial. The discount code is PRP10