If you saw Alea’s sketches earlier, you know this girl has taste. No little blue frock was going to pass muster for her. I armed myself with a video still from the new movie and 6 yards of blue fabric and got to work.
Thankfully I did have a pattern for a little girls’ dress with a v-shaped waist, but of course the sizing was completely wrong. Alea is turning 7 but her measurements dictated that I make a size 2T. Don’t you hate patterns? But I was still grateful to have it as a template of sorts.
I basically made the dress twice, once in the blue fabric and again in the sheer overlay. Then I sewed ribbon and lace to the neckline and sleeve hems and sewed buttons up the front. It was actually pretty simple and I was pleased with how easily it came together.
Then I turned it over to Susan for some embellishment. If you’ve slogged through our entire “All About Us” page, you know that I enjoy construction and Susan does embellishment, so this dress was a perfect project on which to collaborate. Sorry, that was an awkward sentence, but it literally hurts my feelings to end a sentence in a preposition.
Susan cut a strip of light blue velveteen and sewed decorative stitches in black before attaching it to the hem of the dress. As that hem was about 150 inches around, each decorative stitch took like 10 minutes to do. We took turns sitting with our foot on the pedal to ease the boredom and ankle strain.
I love it and the little fingerless gloves to boot (please tell me there are spats in the making somewhere???). The Belle dress tutorial was a life-saver but this is just fantastic. I really can’t wait to see the rest of the party.
She looks so lovely! I love the gloves too, it really is a great finishing touch.
I love the dress and the decorative stitches on the ribbon are amazing! Can’t wait to see the gift!
Very cool! And yes, I hate patterns! I just made a Cinderella dress for my 3 year old and her measurements were all over the board. Some said I should make a girls size 6, some were in the 2T range. Ridiculous!
Love the decorative stitching. That’s a really nice touch.
Completely amazing, you girls rock!
Taylor
Okay, my dear. I am starting to think that you read minds or something. It seems that every idea that I am working on for my blog, YOU publish about a week before I get mine up. ;0) Great job on the dress! Thanks for sharing, but next time could you just wait an extra week to post it so that I can post mine first? (hee, hee!)
Awesome! Patterns make me so frustrated sometimes. You can’t even count on going by the measurements. With DD’s Halloween costumes, by measurements 1/2 should have been a little big but short and the 3 was so small it wouldn’t even zip! (thankfully I made it out of junk fabric first to check the size) I ended up making a size 6 for my two year old! (it’s a touch big, but I have to get layers under there, it’s cold here on Halloween).
It’s gorgeous!!
You keep talking about Alea’s sketches, but I can’t find the link… I wanna see! Help?
oh my. WOW!! it looks fantastic!! all that trim! hehe
She is tooo cute. I love it.
ADORABLE!!!
It’s perfect!
Which pattern did you kind of use?
That’s my sis-in-law’s name. :)
So pretty.. love, love!!
Great job on this (love the v-waistine) and darling model!
What a lucky lucky girl! I get all giddy over anything Alice :)