Last updated: Feb 23, 2010

Sewing: Remake Square Dance Dress into Toddler Dress

For several years, I was active in square dancing - even to the extent of being a square dance caller for almost a decade. But in recent years, I have moved on to other interests. As a keen sewing enthusiast, I made several frilly square dance dresses. Stick a crinoline under them and twirl - what a sensation! But even in the square dance world, styles change, and these dresses are definitely old hat. What to do with them? Recycle, of course! My inspiration for one makeover was a little toddler's dress that I had made a while ago. I figured that I could convert much of a square dance dress into a similar little dress. The photo at right shows both the inspiration toddler dress and the square dance dress that I was ready to cut up. The square dance dress has a clown print, so it will be appropriate for a toddler. And this article will discuss many of the design decisions that I had to make, as well as deconstruction and reconstruction techniques.
The pattern for the toddler dress came from a Martha Pullen book, Martha's Sewing Room: Program Guide for Public T. V. Series-100 - the reference book for Series 100 of the "Martha's Sewing Room" televion show. The photos show the front and back of this book. And the back shows a couple of girls wearing dresses made from this pattern.
Deconstruction: Remove Zipper The first step was to remove the zipper, as shown at right. In the end, I reused the zipper, but the zipper opening was much shorter.
Design Decision: Skirt Shape The original pattern for the toddler dress had a rectangular skirt. But, as shown in the photo at right, the square dance dress had a gored skirt. I decided to keep the skirt as is. The gores were triangular, but not so much that the hem would be too much wider than the waist.
Deconstruction: Remove Skirt I just cut off the skirt at the waist.
Design Decision: Skirt Length The book suggested that toddler dresses tend to be longer these days. So I shortened the skirt to 21". I trimmed the skirt at the waist. That way, I would not have to re-hem the dress - I could use the original hem.
Design Decision: Ruffles or Not The square dance dress had ruffles covering the princess seams of the bodice. I wondered if I could place pattern pieces so that I could keep those ruffles. One consideration was how it would look at the shoulders: either I would remove the ruffles and resew them in place, or just encase the ruffles in the shoulder seam. In the end, I couldn't find a good place to position the pattern pieces with the ruffles. And the ruffles seemed too big for the pattern pieces.
This photo shows the princess seams under the ruffles.
And this photo shows the ruffles being removed.
Deconstruction - Take Bodice Apart The first step was to remove the underarm seam.
The second step was to cut the sleeves off.
The third step was to cut the shoulder seams off. The princess seams were left in place. The photo shows a front, two backs, and two sleeves.
Design Decision: Yoke Pattern Placement I decided to try to avoid the princess seams, although it was impossible to do so completely. The backs of the square dance dress still had the folds for where the zipper had been. So I put the "center back" line right on that fold line. If all went well, reinserting the zipper would be easy. I also cut out two back yokes closer to the waist of the square dance dress, to serve as yoke linings.
The front yoke pattern had a center fold, so I positioned it on the fold of the square dance dress bodice.
I was having some trouble because of the princess shaping for the bust, so I slashed the fabric sort of in dart territory, to make the bodice lie flat. I also cut a front yoke closer to the waist, again to serve as a yoke lining.
Design Decision: Use Sleeve Elastic and Hem In the interests of laziness or efficiency, I decided to reuse the original hem and elastic. However, there was a slight problem with the elastic: for most of the sleeve, it was simply encased in a zigzag stitch - it was only stitched to the fabric at the underarm seams.
I wanted to keep the original elastic in place, so I had to pin the sleeve to a cutting board, stretching out the elastic so that I could lay a pattern piece on it. The original sleeve had a curved hem, but the pattern had a straight hem. So I just positioned the pattern piece so that the center would land on the center fold of the sleeve. And I positioned the hem so that is was sort of parallel to the original hem. I made sure that the sleeve elastic would land in the lower part of the sleeve.
Remember how I mentioned above that the elastic was only attached at the underarm? Well, then it would be a BAD IDEA to cut through that elastic where the pattern said to cut. So I cut out a tab containing that elastic - this was a temporary measure. Notice this totally original sleeve design, loosely based on the pattern!
To cut out the second sleeve, I felt that it would be difficult to duplicate the pattern position, so I just laid the first small sleeve onto the second large sleeve, and used it as the pattern.
This photo shows the elastic being sewn down at the small sleeve edge, so that I can remove that temporary tab.
Construction: Cutting Skirt This pattern has a small template for cutting the armhole out of the skirt.
Construction: Gather Skirt to Yokes This photo shows the back skirt about to be gathered to the back yoke.
In these photos, the back yoke is sewn to the back skirt. The top photo shows the right side, and the bottom photo shows the wrong side.
This photo shows all yokes sewn to the skirt.
Construction: Zipper The first photo shows the first size of the zipper pinned, ready for sewing a lapped zipper. The second photo shows the completed lapped zipper.
Construction: Yoke Lining This photo shows the three pieces of the yoke lining sewn at the shoulders. The bottom portion is turned up and pressed, in preparation for a later stitch-in-the-ditch to sew the linings to the yokes.
The yoke lining is sewn to the yoke at the neckline. The seams by the zipper are already pressed in place.
I clipped and understitched the neckline, so that it would turn nicely. The second photo shows the understitching from the right side.
I hand-sewed the yoke lining to the zipper.
I pinned the yoke lining in place so that a stitch-in-the-ditch from the right side would catch the yoke lining.
And here is the Stitch-In-The-Ditch.
The Final Result The photo shows the dress after the sleeves were added. Since the original hems were used, no more work is required on this dress. Some little girl will love to twirl in this one.