Of course I forgot to take a before picture (one day I'll remember!), but here's an *almost* before picture:
And on the reluctant model (with leggings because I'm a family friendly blogger like that):
They barely covered the top half of her tush with the ruffle intact. And of course she loved them and wanted to wear them every day. Everywhere. Eeeeeeegosh. So I needed to make them longer. I looked allover for a tutorial and couldn't find one, so I just decided to wing it. If you have an old pair of overalls, you'd like to overhaul or just a pair you'd like to make longer, maybe this will help!
So, first I removed the existing tiny ruffle.
I cut a piece of base fabric a little wider than the bottom of the skirt and long enough to cover her tush. Then I cut three pieces of fabric wider than the width of the base fabric. I actually am super lazy and just cut the fabric the width that it came on the ream. Each piece of fabric is folded in half in the pictures (because you have to have a front and back- having just a front wouldn't solve the tush exposure problem).
Then I hemmed the bottom of each ruffle piece by folding up an 1/8-1/4 of an inch and ironing, then folding and ironing again.
See? It's folded twice so there won't be any exposed raw edges.
Then I zigzagged along the top because I don't have a serger, followed by a straight stitch along the top with a longer than default stitch- I used a 4, my default is 2.5. I ruffled each layer slightly by pulling the bobbin thread and lined up my first piece face down, raw edge to edge and sewed them together.
Wyatt helped.
Then I folded it over, ironed flat, and top-stitched.
Then I did the same thing with the second row, marking with pins where I wanted it placed- about 2.5 inches above the bottom row. This will depend on how large your ruffles are, but you want to make sure you place it low enough that you don't have a gap between ruffles, but high enough that you don't completely cover the bottom ruffle.
For the top ruffle, I didn't bother folding over and sewing because this part is attaching to the overalls. So just pin in place and sew a straight stitch.
Now fold in half and sew right sides together to make a skirt then pin skirt around bottom of overalls right sides together.
Then zigzag around the seam and trim excess fabric.
Then flip down and iron flat, and top-stitch.
Voila!
Isn't she just lovely?? |
And shy. |
Overalls are good for climbing... |
And pretending to snowboard... |
And for being just plain cute. |
How much do I love her?? "THIS MUCH!!!!!!" |