Pillowcases take 2

As I mentioned in my last post, we've received several pillowcases from various hospital stays. They're adorable and we love them especially in the hospital...but what does one need 15 extra pillowcases for?! We do use a lot of them on both kids' beds, but still felt like we had too many. Enter another issue -- a couple of Sarah's rounds of chemo have required her to have a catheter inserted for several days...which completely cuts out the use of pants for those days. We started running low on dresses.....so I made some out of the cases we got in the hospital. Again, I made a couple over the summer, and finished a couple more this weekend.


Using tips from this blog and this, I mixed them together and made my dresses!

The picture quality isn't the greatest (I'm still new at this...I promise my pictures will get better!) and you can't see the black straps on the green dress because of the dark background...but you get the idea. I made the red one and the purple/orange one this summer, and the other 2 were my weekend projects :). Sarah wore the green one for chemo yesterday and has the yellow strapped one on today. These dresses are a little bit big for her now, but the adjustability in the ties will allow her to wear them for at least a couple of years, and then probably as a shirt after that. To be perfectly honest, if the bottom hem was just a little wider, I  could wear them as a shirt if I so desired!

My final process once I combined the patterns linked...

I cut the pillowcases down to 26" by cutting off the closed end of the pillow. Then measured in 3 inches and down 5 on each side and cut out a "j" shaped arm opening. I used double fold bias tape to finish the armhole and form the straps -- cut 36" piece for each arm and pinned it evenly around the armhole, letting the extra come up off of each side, then sewed it together. Once both sides are done, so is the dress! You can add any embellishments you desire -- 3 of mine do not, but on the green and pink one, I added a strip of black grosgrain ribbon around where the green and pink meet.

Sarah likes her dresses, too!