Nightgown alteration + hem monsters

I altered a nightgown!

It's one of those old fashioned fine cotton ones with very long pintucks.

Before.

It had these stupid 3/4 length sleeves with button cuffs on them. What's the point of cuffs there?? They were way too short to reach my wrist, and so tiny that buttoning them around my arm was impossible.

Bad and foolish sleeves, so I cut them off. I turned one of them into bias binding for the armholes, and the other I used as a collar ruffle. I was very indecisive about the collar, but eventually went with a stand collar and put a ruffle along the top. There wasn't quite enough sleeve material for the collar itself, so I used a different scrap of white cotton.

After.

I wanted to put monsters all around the hem, just because.

 I drew a bunch of them in my sketchbook and used the ones I liked best on the nightgown.

I did some practice monsters on a scrap of sleeve. (Which turned out blurry after steaming because I didn't rinse it in dye set solution.)

I drew out my monsters all around the hem with a fabric marker, which I got recently and I like very much! It's the sort that disappears when you put water on it.

In the textiles studio we use these delightful little pointy tipped squeezy bottles for drawing with resist on silk scarves, and I used my finest tipped one to draw my monsters on with black dye paste. (Which is a thing we mix up in the textiles studio, and I shan't get into the particulars of it now)

Always, always wear gloves when working with PRO MX fiber reactive dyes.

My monsters turned out so nice! With proper setting and washing they didn't blur at all.

Front.

Back.

And here are some detail shots of them.

This one is my favorite:

I have decided that her name is Elyse, and have drawn a few more pictures of her.

She enjoys rollerskating, gardening, and is working on her masters degree in architecture.

And she does have a lower jaw, it's just very thin.

Here's the nightgown worn with the ruffly bed jacket, which goes very comfortably over sleeveless nightgowns.

I need to make more sleeveless nightgowns, so I can wear this jacket more. It's comfortable and I like it.

I also made a dressing gown for my mother a few weeks ago, which is pretty simple so I'm sticking it onto the end of this post instead of doing a separate one.

Old gown on the left, new one on the right.

She had this other dressing gown that was very worn out, and I just made a copy of this. All the pieces are rectangles, except the main piece, which is a rectangle with a big slit halfway down it that's rounded at the end for the neck.

And here she is wearing it! Photo taken by my father.

It was supposed to be a mothers day present but it was a bit late.