Mending for spring

Maybe it's the increasing amount of daylight, which puts me into a spring spirit despite the recent snowfalls. I have not only started another attempt at decluttering and spring cleaning the house (a job which will take me all the way through to next Christmas...), but I have also started to look at our torn winter clothes, which could be mended into summer clothes.

This is what I came up with sofar:

The writing on my daughter's favourite night dress had faded to a point that it is no longer legible and the sleeves have become at least 2 inches too short. But I really liked the ruffled hem and neck line. So I added a T-shirt with a nasty stain right at the front and combined the materials into a new summer outfit:

And then I did some more conventional mending: Turning boys' trousers into shorts and cutting off the ripped parts of a long-sleeved T-shirt to turn it into a summer shirt:

I am not very good at working with jersey fabrics and I don't own an overlock sewing machine, so my capabilities are somewhat limited. So I tried out something new. I set my machine to a zig-zag stitch and stretched the fabric, while zig-zagging along the edge. When released, the fabric shrinks into a curly ruffled edge, which makes the T-shirt more girly and the sewing a whole lot easier for me.

Do you have any tips for how to mend for spring?