2 new dresses for Raina

Clever title, I know.

I refashioned two shirts for Raina.  She's majorly in to dresses right now, and has to have one layered on top of whatEVER else she is wearing.  Her typical daily outfit consists of: a mismatched pair of socks, leggings, fancy shirt (undershirt), t-shirt, dress.  She would love to add a bathing suit to this ensemble, but we don't have enough of them to keep her outfitted in one every day :)

We got a bunch of hand-me-downs recently, which included these two beautiful shirts:

I am almost too in love with the one on the left:

Where can I find fabric that looks like this that is not already a shirt?

Sadly, they qualify as neither fancy shirt nor dress.   Every time I try to convince Raina she wants to wear one, or just casually leave them on the top of the shirt pile in her dresser, she tosses the aside and declares, "That is NOT a dress!  Sorry!"

I fixed that!  Now they are both dresses!  Incredibly easy ones, too.

The purple floral one, which began it's life as a Gap floaty tank that I would love to have in my size, joined forces with a fat quarter of purple fairy fabric.  Just a simple circle of fabric, gathered a little and sewn to the bottom.

I love some of the details on the original shirt - like the buttons and the straps.  I've made a mental note to add braided straps to an upcoming project.  So cute.

The second shirt, which has some gorgeous frog closures and trim decorating the bodice, met some ruffle fabric.  (Yeah, I don't like the way it photographed, either.  That's why there is only one picture of it as a finished dress as opposed to 12 of the purple one.  This was the only one acceptable enough to share.  disappointing.)

It's cuter than it looks.  I just could not get the ruffle fabric to hang right for pictures.  Maybe on a for reals person it will show better.  Ruffle fabric is amazing in that it doesn't even need to be hemmed.  Cut a length, sew it in a circle, sew to bottom of shirt.  Wowzah.  It doesn't really taper inward.  It's straight, and it's really cute in real life.

And now, hopefully, they will get some attention and not the cold shoulder!

Also, I'm realizing that Raina has a lot of dresses, and I'm just adding to the madness.  I should hold back, but it's just so darn fun to sew colorful sort-of-matching-fabrics dresses for a 3 year old who loves to wear them.  I think I have a problem.