The Bhami dress & Tutorial

Have you ever gotten used to an idea so much so that you do it over and over? I have. Classic gathered jumper has been my favorite for so long, until I figured out how to do a peasant style dress with the bare minimum work. The results have been fabulous.

I call it the Bhami dress!

Making one of these is super easy. It will take only less than 1 hour,really!

Grab your supplies (All measurements are for a 2 year old)

1) Fabric: 1 Yd

2) Contrast fabric or trim: 1/4 fabric (44'') or trim as needed

3) Elastic - 13 inches long

That's all, oh yeah, your sewing machine, thread, needle and all that fancy stuff.

Get started

Step 1: The Fabric

Piece Type 1 - the dress - (cut 2 pieces at the fold)

Piece Type 2 - Arms - (cut 2 pieces at the fold)

You should get 2 pieces of width 10 inches and height: 16 inches

By now you should have the 4 pieces like here in this picture

Step 2: The armhole



I am pretty sure I mentioned this is a super easy project. For armholes you need to align the raw edges of all 4 pieces and pin them all together, we are going to cut armholes at once on all layers (NOTE: make sure you have EACH piece folded in the middle). Like this.

(Tilting of armpieces is expected, trust me, it will go away)

and mark a point 5.5 inches from the tip of the sleeve on the neck side

Now you need to draw a free handed armhole. A basic J shape is fine. See below. Blogger turned my picture like that, sorry!

Do you still have the pins through all four layers? Good. Now cut through all 4 pieces following the share you drew.

Step 3: To the sewing machine (1/4 seam allowance)

What we are going to do next is; sewing pieces right sides together at the ARMHOLE SIDE, PLEASE!.

You will take a bodice piece and attach a sleeve/arm to it.

Now,take the next bodice piece attach it to the sleeve, then you'd attach the next sleeve.

Now the remaining ends are attached here. And you get this.

Step 4: Elastic

Now that you have a dress with a square neck, you can double fold the neck edge and create a case for a 1/2 elastic. DO not forget to leave a 1/2 inch hole to insert the elastic

Insert the elastic through the hole and sew the ends.

Step 5: Seal edges, finish & Hem

Now you can finish the dress my hemming the sleeve edge and the skirt edge using the double fold method. Then close the body pieces as in the picture below. You can hem the edges after dooing this, and thats what I did. Oh, I also sealed the raw edges using a zip zag.

There you have it! A pretty dress.

Cherry on top.

If you want to add the trim go ahead and top stitch the ribbon to the edges.