Small Dress In Reused Frame

This small dress is framed in an old plastic frame. We picked up these frames from our local science surplus store. We painted a few of them and gave two of them a crackle finish. I decided to use one of these frames for a small dress project I thought of making. The frame measures 6″ x 7″ and the dress measures approximately 3″ long by 1-3/4″ wide. I first drew a small plain dress outline on thin cardboard. Once I had a simple shape I liked, I cut out the traced cardboard shape. I then placed the cardboard cutout onto a small remnant piece of pink cotton fabric and with pinking shears cut fabric about 1/4″ larger on all sides. I then hot glued the fabric only onto the back of the cardboard.

I took some white tuling and measured a square a few inches wide, folded it in half, held it against the dress and trimmed the length to the same length of the dress. I then threaded a sewing needle with white thread and sewed in and out of the tuling’s folded edge every 1/8″ inch. When I reached the end, I pulled on the thread and gathered the tuling and when I had the gathered look I liked, I made a knot. I placed the tuling about waist high and used a small dot of hot glue on the back left side of the dress to adhere the tuling and the same on the right back side.

I had a small white remnant piece of soft cotton I cut with pinking shears to the shape of a cute rounded collar, and also found some very pretty embellishments to decorate the dress. I carefully hot glued little beaded strands around the collar and two strands at the waist. I also glued a small pink flower onto the dress. With colored pencils I drew a striped wall paper design on plain paper and placed a piece of velum in front of the paper to soften the look. This was a fun project to make using a lot of remnant pieces.

Framed Small Dress