Well, these are the last two little girl dresses I made out of pillowcases and by now I had got the drill down fast. First I dyed the pillowcases and after drying cut the fabric. Cutting is simple as I'm just snipping off the top about 6 inches so I can make the ribbon that goes through the neckline casing. Then I cut out the armholes and use those pieces to make the top stitched pockets on the front of each dress. Since these were one seam pillowcases, I put that seam down the back and angle seamed the sides so the dress would flare a bit at the bottom. Then I stitched on embellishments -- in this case some silver ribbon made from a hem I'd hacked off another dress. The yellow lace was left over from a table cloth I'd cut up another time (as it was all torn up except for the lace bits). Then I do the neck casing, about an inch and a half and then, after making the ribbon for the casing, I thread it through and make a bow for the shoulder.
I think I've now got the drill down to about 45 minutes per dress (not including the time to dye and wash and dry). There's tons of tutorials on
Pinterest and in various blogs if you need a pattern for making these, just search away!
While I'm sewing these, I stay praying for the girls that will hopefully receive these. I think about how the dress will go with their personality and fit them properly (so I put a size label on them--you can see the white tag hanging off the pocket).
So these were given to
Church of the Redeemer in Bowie, MD This church has a ministry where they deliver these to a non-profit that then packs off the dresses and other items to orphanages in various parts of the world. So once again, I was happy to re-use and recycle some pillow slips and put them to a good use.
It was fun using up the leftover blue jean fabric scraps to make banners for two boys' bedrooms. For each letter, I created a simple triangle-shaped pattern and stitched down the sides and created a casing at the top. I then cut out the letters in a contrasting fabric, tracing them first on the fabric, and overstitched them with zigzagging onto the triangle-shaped pieces. The "cord" holding the banner pieces together is made from the thick leg seams and threaded through the casing with a large safety pin. I then just thumb tacked these to the walls! Depending on the number of letters in the name, you can run these up in less than two hours. 
