Upcycle, Upsize Cosy Winter Dress (Tunic)

I've been seeing many lovely versions of the Cosy Winter Dress (06/11 #3) from the the latest issue of Ottobre Design on sewingmamas.com.  I instantly wanted to sew the pattern up for one of my girls.  But the dress only goes up to size 92. 

B and M are firmly in the 104 size.  Therefore, I needed to up size the pattern.  A great resource for resizing OD:  http://mermaids103.blogspot.com/2008/07/resizing-ottobre.html#!/2008/07/resizing-ottobre.html 

I basically did what Teri suggests but didn't stumble across the post until it was brought up in discussion on the Ottobre English Yahoo Group after I had already sewn the dress.  Go figure!

Pulling from my stash of clothes that would be suitable for upcycling, I grabbed a discarded velour dress of K's.  I had purple ribbing left over from my Billy Cardi.  Combined together we have...

A sweet tunic top!

The pattern uses clear elastic to gather the sleeve edges but BK has been complaining about the elastic bothering her.  Next time, I'll use regular elastic as the clear kind I have does have rather rigid, sharp edges.   eta:  The pattern has a lining but I chose not to line the dress/tunic.  If I had, it would have sandwiched the elastic between the outer dress and inner lining.  eta2:  Yesterday, while I had BK try on another top I'm sewing for her, I topstitched above the ribbing cuffs so that the clear elastic would lay flat and not bother her.  The topstitching did the trick!

The purple ribbing coordinates nicely with her pair of hand-me-down Gymboree corduroy pants.

 

BK trying to follow my direction of "smile pretty and open your eyes up wide"

M has asked for a similar top and I believe Grandma has some velour sets tucked away for me to use.;) 

Linked up to The Train To Crazy:  Make It, Wear It Thursday