Pillowcase Dress

I have been wanting to make a pillowcase dress for sometime now. I have never found instructions that were as clear as I thought they should be until today. I want to give a BIG THANKS to JEN for allowing me to use her instructions to this tutorial!!! Be sure to visit her blog Red Instead Blog There are tons of projects there!

You Need:
1 pillowcase
12" of 1/2" elastic
Extra Wide Double Fold Bias Tape

1. Iron your case flat making sure the seams are where they are supposed to be. The open end of the case will become the bottom of the dress.



2. Measure from your child's shoulder down to where you like the dress to fall. Measure this on the case starting from the open end and add 1 inch for seams. (For mine I used 20".) Cut off the excess.



3. Fold the two top edges 1/4″ to the inside and press. Then fold down edges 3/4" and press to form a neat casing for the elastic.




4. Fold case in half lengthwise (long sides touching)and pin sleeve pattern to case with the pattern matching the top and side edges. Cut away excess. You can find the pattern here: http://www.everythingsewing.net/howtopictures/pillowcase_dress/pillowcase_pattern.pdf




5. Unfold case and take to sewing machine. Stitch the bottom of the casing closed leaving the ends open at the sleeves. Cut elastic into two 6″ pieces. Attach a safety pin to one end and thread it through one of the casings. You’ll need to pin the other end of the elastic when it gets to the casing so that it doesn’t come all the way out. Stitch across the open end of each casing to hold your elastic in place. Repeat with the other elastic and casing. I used a straight stitch and a zig zag for extra strength.



6. You case should now look like this:



7. Cut two pieces of binding 28″ long. Slip one armhole edge into the fold of one of the binding pieces, leaving about 10″ or so overhanging the top on each side - these form the ties. Beginning at one end of the binding, stitch all the way around to the other end of the binding. Repeat for the other side.


You should now have a pretty pillowcase dress. I found by accident that you can tie the ties a different way to totally change the look:



Here is my pretty model in her new dress