Upcycling Mom's Shirts to Dresses for Girls

This post is a blast from the past from my Rachelle's Writing Spot. The great thing is that the maroon dress is still in action--passed down from older sister to younger. So this went from Mom's shirt to girl's dress Xs two!

One afternoon I decided I'd better patch some more of my daughter's pants before school resumed. I will post a tutorial about how I do that next.

When I pulled out my fabric scraps to let the girls choose what I should use for the patch, they got really excited about the possibilities. They wanted me to make them new pants from the scraps. I tried to explain that you had to have more fabric to make a whole pair of pants.
Then I remembered all the cute makeover projects I'd seen on Make It And Love It

I ran up to my closet, pulled out two shirts that I hadn't worn in over a year and went to work making two darling dresses for my girls.

This is one of those skin-tight shirts and so it took less than twenty minutes to pull together for my four-year-old.

I tried it on her, pinned it up, sewed, and cut off the excess. I pulled up the tops of the shoulders to decrease the neckline to the right size.

I love these cute stripes on my brown-eyed girl!

Miss G's dress took a few more steps because the shirt was kind of odd to begin with. I purchased it for $1 on clearance at Wal-Mart, yes that's one dollar, people!
I tried it on her several times and she was very worried about getting stuck with pins. I sewed up the sleeves to fit her arms and then I had to work with the neckline which was designed kind of like a cowl-neck top.

I had some beautiful lace in a box of sewing scraps that I used to get this dress to the right length--just at her knee.

La Piece De Resistance was the brooch that came with the shirt. Miss G thought that was fabulous. She said that she looked like a princess!

My girls were all decked out for our holiday party and love their new dresses. So do I, because you can't beat FREE!
I'm excited to try this again. I need to clean out my closet and see what else I can find.
Do you have some sewing projects on your to do list this year? What gets your creative bug going?