I've been seeing a lot of smocked and shirred sundresses at the store lately and I thought, I bet I could make that. Also, quick note, a lot of stores market an item as being smocked but most of those are really just shirred. I was looking up how to do smocking and not only did it look way too complicated, it didn't really look like the stuff I'd seen at the store either. Anyway, I looked up some tutorials online and it looked way too easy, so I tried it and it really is that easy. First you need to get some elastic thread. Something like this...
Next you need your fabric. I had an old tank top that I never wear anymore, but I still liked the pattern so I decided to make a little girl sundress. To measure, you just take a chest measurement and then do 1 1/2 times that (plus seam allowance) for the width of your fabric. For the length you just measure from arm pit to where ever you want the dress to hit.
I just chopped off the fabric on the bottom half. The nice thing about using this shirt was that the edges and bottom hem were already finished, so I just had to finish the top edge.
After you have the top and bottom hemmed, you just start with your shirring. Take your elastic thread and hand wind it onto your bobbin. Don't pull it tight, just wind it normal. Load the bobbin into your machine. Use normal thread for the top. I picked a contrasting color. You might want to play with the stitching length on a piece of scrap fabric to see what you like best and make sure that the shirring is actually working. Then start sewing straight lines of stitching across the whole bodice of the sundress. Just start at the top...
And work your way down. You can space them out however you want. I just did to the side of the presser foot.
Do as many rows as you want. Obviously you will need more for an adult one than you do for a baby one. I did 10 rows. And Viola!
A shirred sundress! You can leave it like this if you want to. For a young child I decided that the dress needs straps. I kept the hardware from the original top so that I could reuse it on the sundress.
I think that it gives the dress some added interest, but it also serves a useful purpose, because if the child outgrows the strap length but not the dress, you can chop them off and add new ones. I thought that tying ribbon through there and having bows at the shoulders could be cute too.
I used some of the left over material to make straps. Double fold so there are no raw edges.
And sew up the middle.
I just pulled through the loop and sewed the strap to itself. Or you can just sew the straps directly into place on the dress.
And now you have a really cute little dress. And maybe I'm just really vain, but I feel like it looks just as good as the ones you can get from the store.
