The Sweetheart Skirt & Tee

This outfit started out with me trying a pattern for a Basic Tee from Dana at MADE.  If you've never seen her work, she is incredibly creative, and offers awesome, free tutorials. Dana does a very easy to understand tutorial, so if you are interested in getting the free pattern and making one yourself, you will definitely want to check out her blog.
So the pattern looked pretty simple, but I wasn't sure how it would fit. I wanted to make the tee for Little Man, but since the pattern was a 4T, I figured I'd give it a try in girly fabric first, since that's closer to Miss Magoo's size.
I used a comfy jersey dress that was starting to come apart at the seams. I'm seriously just cutting up my entire closet, lately! But I want to learn to sew better, and what cheaper way to get experience than with things I'm planning to get rid of anyway, right? To see what else I've made from cast offs, click here or here.
As you can see from the picture below, you just cut out 4 pieces from the pattern that Dana offers.

After you have your pieces, you sew the shoulders and add ribbing at the neck (by far, that is the hardest part of the tee-- the rest is really easy). Once your ribbing is finished, you sew up the sides, and the tee is finished. I'm thinking I might take the brown ribbing out and change it to pink. It just ended up looking a bit too boyish (of course, it is a boy pattern, so that's my fault).

Once I finished this tee, it just wasn't looking very cute. It was definitely more boyish than I was wanting. So... I thought maybe if I added some pink hearts to the front of it, it would be cuter. I went to the fabric shop and unfortunately, they only had 1 color of pink knit. And it's pretty bright. In fact, it's almost atrocious. And of course, Miss Magoo loves it. Our tastes are pretty different.
I bought a 1/4 yard of the pink fabric, which ended up being far more than I needed, so a new plan hatched. I decided to use the remaining fabric for a skirt. It was plenty wide, but just a bit too short, so I added some peach jersey from another one of my shirts by cutting the arms off and making 2 long bands.

I cut one of the peach strips to the width of Miss Magoo's waist. Then I ironed it in half and ironed it in half again (like making bias tape). I gathered the top of the pink fabric until it was the same width as the peach fabric, pinned the pieces together and sewed down the top ironed line. Then I folded the peach fabric up and over, and stitched as close to the seam of the peach fabric on the other side as I could. I pulled a piece of elastic through the waist and made it a bit smaller than Miss Magoo's waist, so it would stay on her well.
With the other strip of peach fabric, I folded it in half and sewed it shut. Then I pinned it to the bottom of the skirt and sewed it in place, and then ironed it down flat.
The verdict?
This outfit is okay. Haha. Miss Magoo loves it, and that's all that really matters to me. I think it's almost cute, and almost atrocious. But I don't like the color pink (and go figure that would be my daughter's favorite color!), and I'm still just not loving the brown ribbing at the neck. But here is my adorable model showing off her new outfit.

She was telling me, "It's pretty windy. I should have put my hair in a pony tail."
And in this next one, she was telling me all about how when she grows up she's going to be a gymnastic (her word for gymnast) and an Irish dancer.

Have you made any projects like this, where they didn't turn out exactly how you had envisioned them?

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