A while back I saw a friend of mine wearing a reverse stripe shirt. Actually, I’m just calling it that…none of the Google search terms I entered brought up a shirt like the one she was wearing. The body of the shirt was white with black stripes and the sleeves were black with white stripes. I really liked it, so I kept my eye out for two fabrics to use that I could recreate her shirt and make my daughters striped matching girls dresses.
When I saw this taupe and off-white striped modal jersey fabric from CaliFabrics, I immediately thought of another fabric in my stash that would work with it to recreate my friend’s shirt. It was a cocoa with white stripes in jersey knit fabric. Striped matching girls dresses, here we come!
It turns out the two fabric aren’t exactly perfectly matched, because one has white stripes and the other is on the off-white background. But the taupes are the same color, or close enough, so I went ahead with my plan.
I had enough fabric to make maxi dresses for my two youngest daughters. For my older daughter, I used the Uptown Downtown Dress by Sew Straight Patterns. For the younger daughter, I used the Janie Dress.
Both of these dress patterns have a wide enough size range to fit both of my daughters, but I already had each of these patterns in the right sizes, and was in a hurry to execute my plan of making striped matching girls dresses!
For Annie’s dress, I used the cocoa with white stripes for the main body of the dress, and the off-white with taupe stripes for the sleeves, neckband and pockets.
For baby Tina’s dress, I used the off-white with taupe stripes for the body of the dress, and the cocoa with white stripes for the sleeves and neckband. Both fabrics are super soft, great quality, and haven’t pilled with lots of washing and wear!
The girls love their matching-but-not-too-matching dresses. The effect is very fun and gets a lot of double takes! These dresses will be great in summer and with the maxi length, they should be able to wear them all summer too.
It would probably be easiest to match colors by buying both fabrics from the same source, or in a brick and mortar shop. Another idea is to get black and white & white and black stripes because there wouldn’t be as much variation. Or a third idea is to buy both fabrics from the same manufacturer, like Art Gallery Fabrics. They have some very nice stripes of all color and sizes in their super soft knit fabric!
Skirt Fixation 