T-shirt Dress For Girls | Simple Sewing

The easiest dress you’ll ever sew! Simply take a girl’s t-shirt as the pattern, 1 yard of fabric, and in less than 45 min you’ll have a simple dress she’ll love to play in.

I’m a simple person. Well, at least I’ve grown into one after having four girls, homeschooling, and leading worship, not to mention all the hobbies I like to tinker in — knitting, crocheting, cake decorating, gardening, and finally … SEWING!

Way back when (when I was newly married and only had one daughter), I loved sewing dresses and costumes for my firstborn. Oh the bliss, the grandeur! The long nights. The pages and pages of patterns. The vocabulary. The books to define the vocabulary. The internet searches to figure out what the heck the pattern was talking about. And this was before Pinterest, people! *GASP* I know, hard to remember life without Pinterest. 😉

Let’s just say I’ve graduated to wiser ways. Who’s got time to pull out tissue-paper thin patterns, carefully cut them out, and follow the 439 details that aren’t so clear to us frazzled mamas operating on four hours of sleep and way too much coffee?! Oh, and don’t forget three kids later.

Don’t get me wrong. Every once in awhile I love to work on a challenging project and make my girls something special (get ready, mamas — prom is a comin’). But for now, a simple play dress while they’re still little enough to fit the length of a yard of fabric, and still young enough to want a play dress, then this pattern is my kind of DIY.

T-shirt Dress — The list

• a t-shirt that fits the child you’re sewing for
• a yard of cotton jersey knit fabric; this usually comes in 56″ wide
• sewing machine

T-shirt dress — The deets

Fold the t-shirt in half, shoulders together.

Measure from the child’s shoulders down to where you want the dress to hang. For this dress, I cut 32″ for the length.

Fold the fabric wider than the t-shirt (see video below).

Place the folded t-shirt on the folded edge of the fabric.

Cut the length of the fabric to desired length of dress.

Cut a half inch extra around the pattern of the t-shirt for seam allowance (what I typically use or adjust to whatever seam allowance you want to use), and angle out cut from t-shirt toward the bottom edge.

Now for the sewing!

Take the front and back pieces and sew one of the shoulders together with right sides facing each other.

Unfold the front and back pieces and lay out flat to measure the length of the neckline. I did not do this in the video, but after sewing two dresses now, and not happy with the result of the neckline, I have decided this would have been a better way. Learn from my mistakes. You’re welcome. 😉

With the scrap of material, cut out the length for the neckline plus an extra 2 inches by 1.5-3 inches wide, depending on desired finished look for the neckline. I used around 3 inches wide for a finished look of about an inch or so. You want to cut the strip a few inches longer than the neckline measurement so that you don’t stretch the strip to fit across the entire neckline. I had to stretch it to fit and I think that’s what caused the weird neckline that doesn’t want to lay flat. *Sigh* The joys of learning by failing (well, that’s how I see it in my type-A world, anyway).

Fold this piece in half, wrong sides together, and press with an iron

With raw edges together, sew this piece to the neckline of the dress, starting at one of the edges. Cut off any extra neckband fabric at the end of the seam. Press the seam flat.

Finish the sleeve edges by rolling under to hide the raw edge and stitch. You can be precise with an iron, or do what I just did and eyeball it. I’ve come so far from my days of twenty-something type-A to my current forty-something “ain’t nobody got time for that!” practices, HA!

Almost to the finish line!

Sew the other shoulder seam.

Now sew the side seams.

Finish the bottom edge of the dress with a nice hem. I actually took the time to use my iron on this one since I used a larger hem of 1 inch. I ironed under half an inch, and then again to hide the raw edge, and then I stitched it all around close to the folded edge.

Now your little girl has a play dress to romp around on any day she pleases! We like to pair this t-shirt dress with under shorts.

Video Simple t-shirt dress for girls

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Do you like to sew simple dresses?

I hope you give this simple tutorial a try! If so, leave me a picture of your dress in the comments below. I’d love to see what you sew for your precious ones!