Mini Polo Dress Up-cycle

I had bought 4 ladies polo shirts recently thinking that they would make good everyday wear around home. However, like sometimes happens, once I got them home they weren’t quite right for me (freakishly high neck lines for a ladies shirt making my bust look really low – but that is another story). So the shirts sat in my cupboard, never seeing the light of day until a favourite little play dress of ours finally became un-wearable and I saw the opportunity for a conversion and to perhaps feel a little better about the unused shirts.

Here is what I came up with:

Because I used the existing collar, cuffs and hem of the t-shirt, this was an extremely fast project, I think it took me about 15min.

Mini Polo dress in action

If you would like to see your mini miss in a mini polo dress too, here is what I did:

1. First I lay the old dress down on top of the polo shirt, lining up the shoulders (you could use a slim fitting t-shirt here instead with no problems), I cut around the body section in the shape of the existing dress making sure to leave seam allowance.

2. I lined up the sleeves of the existing dress with the top fold of the polo shirt sleeves and with the cuff. I cut around the sleeves, again leaving seam allowance.

3. Finally, I measured the length that I required for the skirt and cut that from the bottom hem of the shirt, adding seam allowance of course.

I then had something that looked like this:

Polo dress pieces

4. The next bit was simple enough, I sewed the sleeves to the body piece, making sure that I lined up the shoulder seams with the folds in the top of the sleeves.

I did this project on the overlocker/server which is the easiest thing when sewing knits, if you are using your sewing machine I believe you could use a zig zag stitch with success.

5. Then I sewed the side seams together starting at the opening of the sleeve and finishing at the bottom edge of the body piece. Mine looked like this:

Sew the body part of polo dress

6. The next thing I did was to gather the skirt piece so that it was the same distance around as the bottom hem of the body piece. I then sewed the two pieces together and topstitched the seam (although I think the finish would have been better had I not added the topstitching).

7. Done! One 15 min mini polo dress conversion. For an idea of sizing, my daughter is 2 and this was a size 10 ladies polo shirt.