vintage apron to doll dress tutorial

One of my goals pre-holiday was to make some doll clothes for my girl's main Christmas present, her blabla doll: Trixie. I didn't want to do anything with elastic or buttons --nothing too challenging, and I despise working with patterns (my sewing skills are novice at best.) While I was looking through my bins of scrap material, I came across several vintage skirts I had purchased awhile back. They were so detailed and beautiful, I couldn't pass them up. With small patterns, I thought they would make perfect easy dresses for Miss Trixie.

The "body of the dress is the main part of the apron. With the blue, I used the "true" top of the apron and hemmed the bottom, since I liked the pleat at the top. The orange apron had a sweet ribbon detail at the bottom so I hemmed the top and used the true bottom.

Depending on your doll size and your apron style, the measurements and steps are going to be different. I did a lot of draping and pinning on the doll before I sewed anything. Each of the aprons had at least one pocket, which I removed and used for the "bib" part of the dress after I folded down the top corners and sewed them down to secure. The pocket for the blue went under the waistband, and I laid the pocket over the body of the orange one, since I knew I had to make a new waistband for that one.

I used the "ties" of the apron to make the straps and also the bow and waistband for the orange. The image above is the inside of the dresses.

Finally, I secured the dresses closed with one little tab of velcro for easy in/out. Each of these dresses took approximately 1/2 hour to complete.

For the entire image collection, visit my flickr set.