The Harrisburg Dress

This post is part of a month long series called 'Pattern Makeover Month.' I took a simple pattern (The Sweet Dress by Leila and Ben) and 'made-it-over' into many different styles. For more information, go here.

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Keeping the quilt theme going-- a CrAzy quilt dress!

Cut the dress pieces with a muslin fabric. The sleeves can be cut with any fabric. I used two different ones to make it a little crazier!

Take one of your lining dress pieces and start towards the top. With the wrong side of your fabric against the right side of your lining, stitch the piece onto the lining. Most pieces I cut were at an angle, going all the way across the lining.

Place your second fabric piece, right side to right side of your first piece and stitch together over the same place you made the original seam. Press the second fabric down and attach your third fabric. There isn't a wrong way to make a crazy quilt/dress. Just keep attaching fabric until your lining is covered. The seams don't even have to be perfect, as you will cover all the seams with trim.

Once you have the lining covered, turn the lining over and baste all the way around the edges. Trim the excess fabric from the edges of the lining.

Now go crazy with your trimmings! Cover all the seams. Use ribbon, lace, ric-rac, gathered chiffon, buttons, whatever suits your fancy. Also, this is a great time to use your fancy stitches on your sewing machine. I don't have very many on mine, but this is what I was able to do:

Finish the dress as directed in the pattern. I also added a six inch chiffon ruffle at the bottom. Cut your chiffon 6 inches by 120 inches. Shir about 3/4 inch from the top, all the way around the ruffle. Attach to the bottom of the dress on top of the fabric making sure that the bottom of your dress is below the shirring line on the ruffle. Stitch on top of your original shirring line.