Bellamy Nightgown to Girl’s Sundress Pattern Hack

Girls Dress Pattern

When I say Bellamy Nightgown pattern “hack,” I’m using that term very loosely, hehe. It turns out that it didn’t take much of a hack to make it into a little girl’s dress pattern for Hattie, and today I’m going to share the details with you! Girls Dress Pattern

When we were in testing for this girl’s nightgown pattern (#bestpatterntestersever), sooo many of the testers commented that their little girls wanted to wear their new nightgowns as dresses, so this idea has been sitting in the back of my mind since then. It’s a simple design, which lends itself to lots of options for wearing, and I say if you want to wear your nightie as a dress, you wear your nightie as a dress :).

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

I’ve had this white/turquoise (these photos don’t showcase the turquoise well but it’s such a pretty color) cotton lycra knit from Raspberry Creek Fabric (affiliate link) in my stash waiting for the perfect project, and when my friend Melissa from Melly Sews mentioned it was almost time for her yearly 30 Days of Sundresses (this year most of the fun is over on Instagram and you can find her here!), I knew this would be just the fabric to join in with! As part of this year’s series, I’ll be having a fun giveaway on my own Instagram account (@sewmuchado) that I’ll announce on June 30, so be sure to hop over, follow me, and enter to win some Sew Much Ado dress patterns!

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

And yay for stripe matching! I am always a bit nervous to check out my striped seams after sewing, but this time they behaved well, thank goodness.

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

I originally planned to draft a new sleeve for this sundress as I thought the nightgown sleeve would be fuller than I’d like for a short sleeve dress. But lucky for me, it turned out to be perfect as is! I simply shortened the sleeve to 2″ below the bottom armscye point (giving 1″ finished underarm sleeve length) and the fit was exactly how I wanted it. That was the only change I had to make to the pattern to use it as a girl’s dress pattern – I told you it was the easiest hack ever!

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

The result is a perfect play-sun-summer-twirly dress for Hattie that she is thrilled to wear. And now that I know how well it works as a dress, I think I’ll be making many more of these. Hattie even requested that I make a shortened version for a t-shirt and I think that will be next on my list! Can you tell that I’m excited about all the possibilities? Hehe. Well, I am ;).

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

I used View C to make this dress, which is the knee length elbow length sleeved version. This girl’s nightgown pattern of course also has options for sleeveless, long sleeves, and also maxi length – which I think could make a super cute dress as well!

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

Hattie still fits perfectly into an unaltered size 4, which makes sewing for her so easy!

Girls Dress PatternGirls Dress Pattern

This fun project has reminded me to look beyond the description of a pattern and how great it can be to use them in out of the box ways! You can find the Bellamy Girl’s Nightgown Pattern HERE to use it for your own girl’s dress pattern, and be sure to follow me over on Instagram so you can get the details for our very soon to be announced giveaway!

Girls Dress Pattern

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