Pillowcase dress for baby

Guess I'm on a little bit of a baby clothes making kick. I decided to make a top similar to a pillowcase dress for myself, got halfway through and decided to make a pillowcase dress for a friend at church who's having a baby girl soon. Too bad my top won't be able to compare in cuteness since it's hard to beat a tiny dress with a bow like this.

I think I may like this one even better than the last baby dress I made. And it's even easier! (I just hope it fits...I didn't exactly use a pattern and didn't have any baby clothes to compare it to : / ) I looked around a little bit at patterns/tutorials for these, but wasn't seeing exactly what I was planning on doing so I basically threw everything out the window and just did my own thing.

Here's what I did, I'll update the post after baby gets to try it on and tweak the dimensions if I need to. Cut 2 rectangles 10"x15" (I would suggest cutting more like 12"x15" because mine looked really tiny). Cut curves out for armholes; I used this template. I scooted the template down about an inch from the top, like this:

Then I sewed the two rectangles together on the edges (right sides together). Hem the bottom; I folded the edge up 1/2" then up another 1/2".

I used this tutorial at Prudent Baby for finishing the armholes with bias tape. I think it really took the dress up a notch as far as looking more professional. And made me wish I was doing that on the shirt I started for myself haha.

For the top you need a tube to feed the ribbon or fabric tie through. I folded the edge under 1/4" then down about 1" and sewed along the edge. Kind of like the picture below.

Then you just feed your ribbon through and tie it in a bow.

Then say "aww that is so cute!' in a little baby voice. Oh wait, I guess you don't have to do that part, but I'm pretty sure that's what I did. : ) I was taking pictures of the dress for the blog, and you can really only take so many pictures of a dress hanging on a hanger. Since I don't have any spare newborns laying around I had to rope Fred into trying it on.

Sorry Fred.

I have to say, it does look pretty good, even on a monkey. Which means it should be even cuter on a little baby girl (assuming she can fit...). Stay tuned for possible pattern updates. The concept of the dress is really simple though, so you can just adjust the dimensions based on the size of the girl.

Have a great weekend!