Little Ruffle Dress Tutorial

Do you have your raglan T patterns ready?
That's all you need to make your very own little Hanna knock off.  For this little Valentine dress I used a red stretch french terry. If you were to use a jersey you would end up with results really close to the original Hanna dress with flatter chest ruffles. French terry is much thicker.
I'll also tell you how to add a ruffle to the bottom just like the original (I wanted to but ran out of fabric).

Now to get started!

Cutting out your pieces...

Don't be alarmed, yes this is a red dress. I took this photo from this tutorial as we will be doing the same thing. Ok, you need to do a few things before cutting out your body pieces to make your top into a dress.

1. Measure your child from their armpit to their knee. Add about an inch and 1/2 for seam allowances (if adding bottom ruffle only add about 1/2 inch).
2. Use your ruler to measure from the armpit of the pattern piece down that many inches and mark.
3. Line a ruler up with the underarm seam. You can see in this photo I have laid it diagonally so that by the bottom of the shirt it flares out in an A line shape by one inch. For my Valentine dress I did the same thing but flared it out 2 inches. In this photo my ruler only goes down to the bottom of the shirt piece but remember, for this dress you need to go down all the way to your length measurement.

If your front and back pieces are the same, cut two of these. If they are different, do the same thing with your back piece.

Arm Pieces- cut exactly like your pattern, but if they are long sleeves shorten them to desired length (I cut mine 1.5 inches below the armpit seam).

Chest Ruffles- Measure the front of your top and cut 3 strips twice that length X 2.5 inches

Bottom Ruffle (if desired)- Measure the bottom of your dress and cut 2 stripes twice that length X 2.5 inches

Take your chest strips and fold them wrong sides together lengthwise. Along the raw edges sew two rows of basting stitches.

Grab your shirt front piece, and using a washable fabric pen, measure and draw two rows of lines 1 inch apart from the top. To do this I used a ruler and made dots 1 inch from the top at random intervals and then connected the dots. This will make sure your curve is even and stays true to the 1 inch all the way across.

Pull your bastinhg stitches to ruffle your fabric to the length of your shirt front. Pin your ruffles to your shirt front (one against the raw neckline and then the other two on each of your drawn lines). If using a regular sewing machine you can just use a zig zag stitch to attach. Make sure you are using the same thread color as your dress. This stitching won't show as the ruffle on top will hide the seam allowance, but in case anyone gets a view up into the ruffle, you don't want your thread to be noticeable!

This is what your dress front should look like once all of your ruffles are attached.

Now, put your dress together according to your shirt directions.

FYI- due to the ruffles you will most likely need to bind your neckline using this method (cute free tank top pattern too).

 When you get to the sleeves, I just folded min 1/2 inch in and used elastic thread to ruffle them a little bit. You could also do a casing and add 1/4 inch elastic instead if you have a hard time with elastic thread.

If using elastic thread, two rows will not gather a ton on a thick fabric. It gave just enough gather though, and  in my opinion is a ton faster than making casings if you are able to easily use elastic thread on your machine.

Hemming the Bottom...

I just did a simple hem because I ran out of fabric. I turned my fabric up 1 inch and did two rows of topstitching.
If you want to add the ruffle to the bottom you just need to take the 2 strips you cut. Sew them right sides together to create a tube, fold in half wrong sides together lengthwise and do two rows of basting stitches just like your ruffles. Matching raw edges of ruffle to bottom raw edge of dress, and attach.
I would topstitch the seam above the ruffle once attached. If you need more instruction on this, you attach the ruffle here in just the same way as these ruffle jeans.

 And you've made your own little Hanna-esque Ruffle Dress!

You can complete the entire look and make your own Hanna like cropped tights too! Absolutely perfect way to get more life out of cute tights that might be getting too short. In this case, the only heart tights I could find were one size too small. We don't have any selection in this town so when you find something cute you have to make it work! :)
I'll show you how to fix up your tights another day.

Have a great Tuesday everyone! :)