The story of this dress starts with my eldest daughter Bunny. She has fallen deep in love with the cottagecore aesthetic and had come to me with a moodboard of ideas and a sewing pattern in mind – Protea. One of the many things I love about making things for Bunny is that you can always count on her to make you a moodboard, and i love that so much as it really reduces any misunderstandings or confusion. She mainly wanted view C of the Protea sewing pattern, which is a square neck dress with flutter sleeves and a tiered skirt. She did not however want a drawstring waist, and was very keen on rows of elastic at the waistline to cinch it in a bit more there and give the general vibe from her inspiration board.
For the fabric she wanted to choose a very busy Liberty print – which is quite different from the images she had found for me. Given this hack wasn’t something I had done before, or seen her wear before I thought it was worth making a test run that she could try on and see if she liked the style before choosing her final fabric. Whenever i sew a test run of any pattern i much prefer to use a fabric that isn’t valuable enough for me to feel worried about but is also nice enough that the garment could potentially be used afterwards. I just hate waste and this tends to be a real winning strategy for me with making sure i am careful with materials.
My absolute go to for making toiles is old bedsheets. I tend to keep a nice stash of thrifted bed sheets that I can use in my sewing. Some of the prints in vintage sheets are so cute that I wish i could get them again! I also keep any of our own sheets that have worn out, and my mom has passed on many pretty sheets to me that had seen the end of their life as linens but were perfect for test sewing.
So for this dress I turned to my stash of old sheets and pulled out this very pretty Tommy Hilfiger sheet which I must admit I have no memory of buying. It doesn’t match any of our sheet sets, but has been in my linen cupboard for as long as i can remember, so i have a feeling i thrifted it when we still lived in America. One of the things that is so incredible about using bed linens for sewing is their size. I got this entire dress out of a single flat sheet and still had fabric to spare. I thought the little flowers would probably help her decide if she liked the look of a very floral dress.
I thought that the rows of elastic casing would look so pretty with the contrast edging on the sheet so i carefully unpicked it and ironed it all out so that I could use it. The strips were very narrow- only 1″ (2.5cm) wide so i didn’t have a lot of seam allowance to work with, but I made it fit! The method here was incredibly simple. I sewed the entire Protea view C dress, but just did not add the waist tie channel.
After I was finished i took my my 1″/2.5cm strips and folded in and pressed 1/4″ (6mm) on the upper and lower raw edges. For the first row I carefully pinned the channel the entire circumference of the waistline, so that the bottom edge of the channel was aligned with the waist seam. I then top stitched it in place and left a gap to thread 1/4″ (6mm) elastic. The second row of channeling was placed 1″ (2.5cm) above the top edge of the first row of channeling and was attached by the same method.
I also decided to keep the original labels and add them in to the project too. This is a little thing I love doing with any old garment that I take apart and remake – it’s just so fun to keep a record of where my materials came from.
And lastly I added a little bow to the waistline. It has no function, i just like bows and thought it was pretty.
Now here is the funny part. I was starting to fall in love with this dress whilst I was making it, which is always a bittersweet feeling when you are making something to give away. When I had finished making this test dress, Bunny tried in on, developed a very worried facial expression and declared “I think this might be a little too cottagecore for me”. And I think she was right. This dress is a lot with all the skirt and sleeve volume and the little flowers and the contrast elastic channels.
In the end she decided she would like a solid colour linen for her final dress and wants to omit the skirt tiers so that her dress is above the knee length and not quite so voluminous. Given her tastes and style I thought this was a great choice, and I’m really enjoying seeing what fabric she chooses for it.
And of course, I cannot tell a lie – i was more than a little pleased to find that I had an excuse to welcome this dress into my wardrobe. So if anyone wants me I’ll be floating around my garden, cuddling my chickens and pretending that I live in the actual countryside. It’s amazing isn’t it to think that a dress made from a bedsheet could turn out so pretty?
I love how my cottagecore bedsheet Protea dress turned out, and I hope that I’ve convinced you to give a thought to using old sheets in your sewing. I think you’ll be really surprised what great materials you can find in thrift stores/op shops and even in your own linen cupboard.
Some of my other Projects using sheets
Tie front Protea hack tutorial
I’ve seen so many tie front blouses with peplums and puffy sleeves over the…
September 21, 2025
Art Smocks!
Birdie’s school requires each child to have an art smock for when they do…
February 28, 2023
Birdie’s Vintage Sheet Mini Darling Ranges
Birdie’s vintage sheet Mini Darling Ranges dress is her current obsession and Lord help…
April 16, 2022
Bunny’s Vintage Sheet Mini Darling Ranges dress
I’ve been sitting on so many gorgeous Mini Darling Ranges makes waiting to release…
September 12, 2020
Teaching Bunny and Flossy to sew
I have always wondered if or when my kids would show interest in learning…
May 29, 2018
Pajama set from an old sheet
About 5 years ago (where has the time gone?!) I blogged about making a…
April 12, 2018
Matilda dress from an old sheet!
My friends, there are insufficient words to describe how much i love these dress.…
September 23, 2017
Bunny & Buddy’s Harmony week heritage costumes
Recently Bunny and Buddy’s school reached it’s 80th anniversary, so to celebrate they had an…
June 20, 2016
