Saving the Hand-Me-Downs

I L-O-V-E hand-me-downs.  It's like going of a shopping spree without spending the money!  We were given some recently.  Most were in great condition, and so cute.  Some had stains.  Honestly, I don't mind that because I hate to spend money on clothes that I plan on sending my girls out to play on the farm in.  Still, there were a couple cute dresses that I couldn't get stains out of that I wanted to rescue.

Stain #1

Stain #2

I covered stain #1 with 3 red ruffles.

Start with 3 strips of knit fabric--one longer and to of equal shorter length.

Turn them into ruffles.  You should be able to do this by setting your sewing machine to the longest stitch length and the highest tension, but for some reason, my old machine wasn't cooperating and didn't gather the material.  So, I gently pulled the bobbin thread until the looked like this. 

To center your longest ruffle, fold dress in half and line ruffle up along stitching.  Pin in place, and stitch to dress following basting. 

Position the shorter ruffles so they overlap the longer one.  Pin and stitch on basting. 

For dress #2 cut 2 strips of knit about twice as long as the pockets.

Make them ruffles like before, but this time baste 1/4" from the edge instead of the middle. 

Adjust your ruffle so it just fits on the pocket.  Pin in place under original ruffle and hand stitch. (I realized later that I could have just removed the pockets, but I liked this idea better).

Hmm...I forgot to take a picture of the whole dress, but here are the finished pockets. 

And here is dress #1 on model.  Wait, who put that little girl in that huge dress!  If the falls, she'll get tangled up in it and won't be able to get up. 

Somebody catch her before she runs out of the picture! 

Well, it will look cute later with a sweater over it, or maybe it will still fit next summer.