Shirt to Dress Project

I finally finished one of the little girl dresses. I made it out of an old shirt of mine that was way to small. Here is what the shirt looked like before:
and after:
I got the idea from: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=170402.0
I made a few changes on the construction, but the basic idea is the same. I will admit, my "tutorial" is rather scanty on details. The original tutorial is much better at giving step by step instructions.

First, rather than cut the shirt apart I picked it apart...more time consuming, but I wanted to get every possible inch of the fabric (it was a rather small shirt compared to the tutorial). I also had to unpick all the darts.
Once that was done I folded the front and back of the shirt in half,measured, and cut the shape. The chest needed to be at least 19 1/2 inches around, including ease. (For the front of the shirt, the tutorial taped the shirt together. I found it much easier to unbutton the shirt and then lay the two sides on top of each other to cut.)
Once the fabric was cut I then cut and basted on some plain white fabric to the shirt because the shirt was rather thin.

The blue lines are the cut edge and green are the finished edge. (for a larger view, click the photo)

With that done, I sewed the three pieces together. The back of the shirt became the front of the dress, and the front the back. I also turned the back of the shirt inside out because it had a decent looking patch that added a nice effect to the dress front. ^-^ Because I don't have a serger I did a flat felled seam on the sides so wouldn't have to clean finish them (tutorials for those seam finishes will come in another post).

The next step was to make some arm holes. I measured the width between my daughter's underarms, marked the fabric, cut, and then clean finished the armholes and top of the dress.
I took the two sleeves, which I also lined with fabric, trimmed them down and clean finished the raw edge. To straighten out the inner part of the sleeve (the side that would become closest to the neck...it used to be the outer edge of the shirt sleeve) I sewed some ribbon on, it also served as a nice decor. Because I straightened out that one edge the other became gathered
I safety pinned the finished sleeves onto the dress and had my daughter try in on to make sure the sleeve wasn't too long from front to back and also to mark the hem.

That done, I tacked down the sleeves and hemmed the dress with more ribbon.
Here is the finished product.
Pictures will be a bit less nerve racking once she can stand on her own. Again, the original tutorial is much more detailed and easier to follow. I promise to be more specific on future projects.