Happy Easter!
I started this dress just over a year ago, when I was less confident with my sewing than I am now. You can see a little bit of puckering where the bodice and skirt meet. At that time I didn't even think about fitting beyond reading the measurement chart, before I started sewing.
Right before last Easter I had her try on the almost finished dress for hemming, only to discover that she was swimming in it. Very frustrated I ended up tossing aside the dress and begrudgingly learning my lesson about fitting. The dress ended up being shuffled from location to location every time it got in my way.
Then, the night before this Easter I was digging through my crafting supplies looking for fabric paint, and found it crumpled in the bottom of the bin. I decided that it was more appropriate for Easter that the South Western Pottery Dress, so I had Bella try it on. What do you know, it fit beautifully.
I spent the night hand basting, hemming, ironing and fighting a loosing battle to make the hem lay flat. I think it spent to much time crumpled. The dress also needed buttons, and of course I couldn't find the perfectly matching blue buttons that I had originally bought so I used yellow buttons that matched the overlay instead. Luckily I am not nearly as terrified of sewing buttons holes as I used to be.
When I first started planning this dress for last Easter, I fell in love with the overlay fabric while browsing a local fabric shop and purchased the duchess satin from Fabric.com
to go with it. The Simplicity pattern was already in my stash and the contrasting buttons (not shown) were from my stash as well.
I hope your family had a great Easter. We sure had fun visiting my mother (back, left) along with my niece and nephew (who's mother is still in the hospital, but doing better.)
