How to Sew a Quick Summer Dress or Skirt (VIDEOS)

Making a pretty summer dress or skirt is a great beginner sewing project. The videos collected here offer several different approaches, including upcycling found material, like a T-shirt or table runner, and starting from scratch with stretchy fabric and your measurements. Try the skater dress or the summer skirt and let us know what you think in the comments.

Coloful Canary's "Cinderella" dress is so simple to make you barely need to know how to sew: It starts with a bed sheet and a table runner. While that combination may not seem very promising, the effect is surprisingly impressive.

Mark Montano's T-shirt dress begins with a tank top and 60 inches of fabric. If you're an inexperienced sewist, you'll definitely pick up some skills along the way. The result is a relaxed, playful dress that will go well with sipping cocktails on the veranda at your beautiful mansion in the Hamptons.

Mrs Crafty Chick takes some stretchy fabric and turns it into a a flirty and fun skater dress. Here you'll learn how to make notches in the fabric to line up your pattern pieces and make clean seams for a clean finish.

If you prefer a skirt to a dress, Annika Victoria's video explains how to make a great summer piece that doesn't require you need to know how to sew a zipper. You will need to put up with a lot of Game Boy-style music, so you may want to turn down the sound for this one. Most of the instructions are printed on the screen.

Threadbanger starts off this summer dress tutorial with a lesson on fabric weaves and a quick explanation on how to shirr. The fabric weave explanation is nice if you're new to sewing. While this project has a great look when its done, beginner machine sewists may want to try to make one of the dresses or skirts first because the shirred effect in this project may take a few tries to get right.

If you want to make a skirt or blouse for a child, Yolanda Soto Lopez explains how to make it by just sewing together a couple of bandanas. While this approach probably won't work for many adults, it is a fun beginner sewing project.