Dress to Skirt Tutorial

I was doing some shopping the other day and found an adorable set of sundresses in the clearance section. My little girl can't wear sundresses anymore this year, so I figured I would make them into a skirt. Plus, it is pretty difficult to find skirts for little girls sometimes, so this is a way to make them.

 The dress, and it also came with a diaper cover, bonus!

 Have your little girl hold it up and see how long you want to make the dress

 Lay your dress out flat and square as you can on the cutting mat, this is where I am going to cut mine.

Note: This was my first attempt at this, and in hindsight I would do it differently. I had some trouble with my bobbin and it messed up the 1st row of elastic thread, so I had to go back and change the elastic waist.

Us a thread color that coordinates with your material, I am using brown. Use elastic bobbin, you can get this by winding elastic thread onto one of your empty bobbins. 

 Sew along the edge of the cut waist line

 You can see the elastic bobbin pulling the material in as you go

 When you get to the end, go back and forth a couple of times. You can stop, pull out your thread and bobbin, snip and tie the tails together, to make sure they don't unravel. I took a short cut and didn't snip the threads, but just jumped down to the next row, about 1/4-1/2 inch down, went back and forth a couple times and continued around with the next row. Either way you do it, just repeat 3-4 times.

 2nd Row

 My little model

 Close up on the waist

Now as I noted before, I had trouble with my bobbin being too loose, so I ended up just folding the material over a piece of elastic that I measured to her waist. Sew the two ends of elastic together, so you have a loop. Fold the material over the elastic band, stitch on both sides of the elastic to keep it in place. If you stitch over the elastic, make sure you stretch out the material evenly, so the material stretches evenly with the elastic.