Friday Dress

Hello, dear blog readers! Spring is one of my favorite times of year, especially here in the Midwest when it finally starts to warm up. I think we are finally past the cold weather, although you can never be too sure. You might wear your winter and summer clothes all in one week! 

Although I have not been blogging as much, I have been sewing quite a bit. My most recent big project was to make Easter dresses for my sisters and I. First up is the Friday Dress, which I sewed for my littlest sister, Miss V. She's not so little anymore, as she likes to remind me! 

The Friday Dress is from Petit a Petit patterns and it is a very classic shirtdress design. As soon as I saw the pattern, I knew it would be perfect for my little sister. The size ranges up to 12 years, so it is a pattern I can use again and again.

There are so many options too, making it perfect for a wide range of ages. For this dress, I chose the full, gathered skirt with a mandarin collar, short sleeves, pockets, and buttons all the way down the front. The dress also comes with the options of a semi-circle skirt, traditional shirt collar, rounded collar, buttons half way down, and long sleeves.

Isn't she the cutest? I made the size 4t and lengthened the skirt quite a few inches because she is tall and I want her to be able to wear this dress for awhile.

I love the collar on this dress! It is so unique and adds a feminine touch to the traditional shirt dress.

The fabric is an Art Gallery cotton, which I bought from my favorite fabric store - Raspberry Creek Fabrics. I have never worked with Art Gallery fabrics before, but this was wonderful to sew! It is a really high quality cotton and the colors are some of my favorites. After some debating with myself and asking for other opinions, I went with navy blue buttons to accent the navy blue flowers on the fabric.

The buttonholes were the most difficult for me. I use the automatic buttonhole foot on my machine, which sometimes works great and sometimes it doesn't work well at all. My first error was mine alone because I put the wrong size button in the buttonholer. I didn't realize it until sewing all of the buttonholes! My seam ripper and I became great friends that day, haha. Even after I had the right size button, some of the buttonholes were too crooked, so I redid them again! They ended up okay in the end, but buttonholes are one of my least favorite things to sew!

The pockets were just the right size for her little hands and perfect for carrying Easter eggs!

I love the little pleat on the back of the dress. I have never sewn a Petit a Petit pattern before, but the instructions are very well done and very detailed. I was impressed with the quality. Even though I have sewn shirts and shirt dress styles before, I find that there is always something new to learn. 

Miss V loves her new Easter dress! She wore it all day on Easter Sunday and has worn it quite a few times since. She is fun to sew for, especially now that she likes (most of) the clothes I make for her!

What have you been sewing? I will be back to blog about the other dresses I made for Easter. I also have been posting for Me Made May on Instagram, so feel free to follow me there if you like!

~Elizabeth

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to my blog readers! I have missed this little spot and decided it was time to come back. I hope you all had a very nice and blessed Easter. We had a nice Easter - just our family but it was relaxing. The weather was not the warmest but the snow held off and we were able to have an egg hunt outside.

I did not get around to making new Easter dresses for all the girls - I did make my littlest sister's dress. I wore my graduation dress from last year and Miss K wore a new RTW skirt.

For Miss V's dress, I went with the TNT Sally Dress pattern. I have made this pattern quite a few times for her and I love the style. It is simple and fairly quick to sew and a great dress for a little girl. I made V's Easter dress last year from the same pattern.

Compared to last year, Miss V is much bigger and so I made a size 3T. I wanted the dress to fit her for awhile, so I measured the length from her waist - this was a mistake however because the bodice seam starts near the chest not the waist! This just goes to show anyone can make a mistake even on a pattern you've made several times.

The dress would've come to above her knees had I left the length. I was able to fix it by cutting a band to add to the bottom and I covered up the seam with rickrack. It looks great and the white rickrack really adds some nice detail to the skirt!

The fabric is some rayon challis from my stash and it's not pink, but Miss V agreed to it right away! I think it looks lovely on her. It was not lovely to cut and sew though. The fabric slipped while cutting making it difficult to cut a straight line. Once I sewed the bodice together the sewing went much smoother. 

Although she may not look happy in these pictures, she really likes her dress! She was tired, but I am glad she enjoys wearing things I make for her - she can be a very picky 3 year old sometimes. 

~Elizabeth

A Sally Dress for Easter

Hello! I hope your week is off to a great start! Mine next couple of weeks will be filled with presentations, other projects, exams, and graduation! It's all so exciting and keeping me busy! Over spring break, I made this Sally Dress for Miss V to wear on Easter.

Spring Easter Skirts

 

 

Over spring break, I decided that my sisters needed some new skirts. Then, when I had extra fabric left, I decided I needed a matching skirt too. I used the Simple Spring Skirts tutorial from Simple Simon and Company and some fabric from my stash. They are so easy to make! You only need two measurements - waist and length - and the tutorial is only 8 steps long! They don't take much time either - I made all three skirts in one afternoon.
 

The main fabric has Easter eggs on it! My mom and I bought it seven years ago when our local Ben Franklin store was having a huge going-out-of-business sale. I was just starting to sew and we thought it was so cute! It just took me seven years to finally use it.
 

 

The pink, contrast fabric is from fabric.com. I bought it two years ago, planning to use it in a skirt, but never got around to it. That's a good thing too, because it's the perfect contrast for the Easter egg fabric!

 

Spring hasn't made up its mind if it wants to come to Minnesota yet or not (it snowed in my hometown today!), but we braved the cold and went outside to take pictures. My 10 year old sister was being a goofball:

 

 This is one of the few good pictures of her from our photoshoot.

 

This is about the best one I have of the three of us.

 

Mostly, she just wanted to be silly!

 

 What's the longest you've kept fabric in your stash before using it?  

 

~Elizabeth

I will be linking to some of the link parties listed here.