Tutorial ~ Little Girl's Ruffled Shirt ~

Have you been to the mall lately? Or, looked through the pages of some catalogs?
There are many pretty clothes out there for this Fall. My favorites are romantic shirts. Lots of ruffles. I was looking through a J. Crew catalog and saw some cute shirts for little girls. If you have been reading my blog, you would know me by now... I am not going to pay $30-$50 on a kid's shirt that they are going to out grow in a few months, even though I love the way it looks.

So, here is the shirt I came up with. Let's have some fun!

I bought this shirt at Wal-Mart for $3.50. I am going to use a camisole that is too low cut for me and I hardly wear. The color matched the shirt, this will be the ruffles.


1, Cut the strips. It is best to have 1 1/2 to 2 more length of where you want to put the ruffle strips. Since this is for a little girl's shirt, I cut the stirps 2" wide. Great thing is, you don't need to worry about the edges with T-shirt material. It will not flay.


2, Using big stitches, sew strips.


3. Pull one string to make ruffles. Even out the fabric to get beartiful ruffles.


4. Place them on the shirt first to see if you need more ruffles and where to place them. When you put the shirt in a dryer, the ruffles will shrink a little, so, it is better to have few more rows than you think you need.


5. Pin a ruffle strip and sew. Sew right next to the big stitches, so, you can pull the big stitches out afterwards. I started sewing from the bottom row and worked my way up. The space between sewed lines is about 1/2"; really I just eye-balled it. if you want a more fuller look, you can place the next row closer to the first one and sew more rows.


6. Done!



I didn't have a chance to let Rachel wear the shirt to take a picture, but I think she would love it.(I do!)

Oh, speaking of Rachel, our little girl debuted in an infomercial! If you are interested, go here and check it out! It was such a fun experience and the whole family (I mean extended families too) enjoyed watching this over and over again. You did such an awesome job Rachel!