Hello! Welcome to Make Thrift Buy, a show where YOU send me clothes and accessories that you've found on the internet,
and I do my best to recreate them.
Today's episode was suggested by a whole bunch of you.
I get it! A lot of you want to see me try and recreate a pinafore dress.
So, let's get started!
I started out with this medium-weight floral fabric I got at the thrift shop.
It’s actually a cotton quilt-cover, that I scored for $3! I gave it a quick iron,
then proceeded to use it to make a half-circle skirt.
Now, I have already uploaded the full instructions on how to make yourself a half-circle skirt on my Youtube channel,
so I won’t go through it in detail again. But I did EXACTLY the same thing that I did in that tutorial,
including adding a waistband and a zipper.
And here’s the finished skirt!
To make this into a pinafore, I needed the following pieces:
My finished half-circle skirt;
Two rectangles of fabric with these dimensions;
One piece of fusible interfacing with same dimensions;
Two long strips of fabric with these dimensions;
Two overall clips; And two of these clips, which are either buckle sliders,
belt sliders or double-loop sliders - I wasn't entirely sure on the name.
If you're particularly short, you can take a couple of inches off this measurement.
Or, if you're particularly tall, like over 6ft, you can add a couple of inches.
It's also a good idea at this stage to hold your pinafore body up to your own human body,
to make sure that the fit looks good for you.
The first thing that I did was to iron the fusible interfacing onto one of the rectangle pieces.
This is an optional step, but it will give your pinafore more shape.
So I ironed the interfacing onto the WRONG side of one of the rectangle pieces.
Then, I placed these two rectangle pieces RIGHT sides together – that is,
so that the nice fabric sides are touching.
Then I sewed them together using a straight stitch like this, leaving one of the longest sides not sewn.
Then I snipped off the corners to make turning easier, and I turned this inside out.
I also used some scissors to help me push the corners out.
Then, to make it look more professionally-made, I top-stitched over these three edges like this.
Next, I added the buttons onto the pinafore. I’m adding jean buttons to make it
look more like the images that people sent me, and also, to allow for the pinafore straps to be adjustable.
First, decided where I would like to place my buttons, and then I stuck the small sharp end of
the button through the 3 layers of fabric, from the back.
I then put the big end on top of this, put everything on top of some fabric to protect the button,
then whacked them together with a hammer.
I repeated this on the other side, to get this!
Then, I finished off the bottom raw edge using my overlocker.
If you don’t have an overlocker, but want neat, finished seams inside your garment,
then back at this step you will need to sew almost all the way around, just leaving
a SMALL gap for turning, instead of an entire side.
Now I’m going to start constructing my pinafore by adding this rectangle bit onto my skirt!
So I lined the skirt up with the rectangle piece, and used the zipper on the back to make sure
that the rectangle was totally centered. However, I'm going to be attaching
this rectangle onto the side without the zipper, so, onto the front of the skirt.
I'm attaching the rectangle to the inside of the waistband.
So, I pinned it onto the waistband, putting my pins in like this so they're pointing upwards.
I then flip the skirt over, and I'm now going to sew across the front of the skirt like this.
I'm sewing on the front of the skirt just so I can keep this line of stitches as straight,
neat and close to the edge of the waistband as possible. And yes, before you ask -
you can sew over your pins, as long as you put them in like I did –
which is perpendicular to the direction that you’re sewing in!
Now it’s time to add the straps!
I folded these two long pieces of material in half length-ways, right-sides together.
I lined them up with my buckle, so that I would know how much I had to narrow them by. Then, I sewed down this line to make a tube.
And, I cut off the excess fabric. I used this first strap that
I made as a guide for exactly how wide my second strap needed to be, because I want them both to be the same width.
And then, I started the somewhat tedious process of turning these tubes the right way around.
When I finished turning them the right way around, I tucked the raw edges down inside the tube about 1 inch
and I sewed over the top.
I then also ironed and top-stitched down both sides of the straps, because that'll help
make it look nicer and a bit more professional.
Now all that's left to do is to attach the straps onto the back of the skirt.
I place each strap 3 and a half inches away from the zipper on each side, and I pin them on,
inside the waistband, with about half an inch hanging down below the waistband edge.
And then I sew them on - again by top-stitching over the waistband.
The last step is to attach the buckles. So for this, you need these two pieces.
First, I threaded the strap through this doodad-slider, like this. Up, and down again.
Then, I threaded the strap through the buckle.
I then threaded it through the back of the slider, and I've got myself some adjustable straps! (Well not quite - check the description box)
So, how does it look? How did I go?
[music plays]
And, because the straps are adjustable, they can be worn either like this, or criss-crossed!
And, that's it. I can't stop looking at all the stitches and the top-stitching and the buttons on this -
'cause it looks so fricken professional!
If you do happen to try out this tutorial, or any of my other tutorials, then please tag
them with #diyannika on instagram. I would really love to see your takes on my tutorials!
Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it or found it useful, and I'll see you all for my very next video. Bye!