Lots of Layers Garden Party Dress

It's Thursday evening and I finally finished my entry for the Project Run and Play Spring formal week. Talk about cutting it close!

This was the most labor intensive children's dress I have ever made. Each of those layers have a narrow hem, individually pressed and sewn without a narrow hem foot. One of these days I am going to invest in some attachments for my machine.

Each ruffle is calculated to be exactly 30% smaller than the original strip of fabric (which by the way are either 4 or 5 in width depending on where they are placed) to create a more fluttery than ruffly look. 

I also fitted this dress on a very squirmy 6 year old a total of 3 times before I got it just right.

At least I managed to get the photos taken before it started to rain. 

I plan to share a step by step tutorial sometime this week, with lots of pictures, but for now I am going to take a nap!

Update: The tutorial is finished. You can see it here!

Southwestern Pottery Inspired Dress

Update: Since I have received so many comments about this fabric I thought I would let you know that I purchased it from Fabric.com . They still have 74 yards left as of today and I am planning to purchase some more myself.

I finally did it! I made my self cut into one of my favorite pieces of fabric. Do you ever do that? Love a fabric so much that your afraid to use it. Luckily an event so big came along that I was able to face my fears and go ahead and cut. This week is the first week of the Project Run and Play sew along linky.

I searched through a bazillion (btw, bazillion is not actually a real number) photo's of famous paintings and loved so many of them, but I got zero (zero is a number in math but in philosophy it is the opposite of infinity and not a number) idea's for a wearable item.

So then I played with the idea of statues. A few things started to take shape in my mind, but I needed some color. Finally I looked at pottery, and there it was my inspiration. The pottery of the Southwest.

Here are a few of my favorite inspiration pieces. 

The fabric is a lightweight cotton sateen with just a tiny bit of stretch to it. I used my ugly vintage pattern as a starting point for the bodice and then lengthened it a few inches and made the neckline just a tiny bit lower. The skirt is self drafted. I left an inch of seam allowance on the top of the skirt and the bottom of the bodice.

To create the elastic casing I began by sewing the skirt and bodice with wrong sides together like you would with a french seam and then I flipped the fabric so that right sides were together and sewed about 3/4 of an inch away from the first seam. Before inserting the elastic I sewed the casing down so it laid flat against the inside of the dress.

My Bella was the lucky recipient of the dress. She can't wait for the snow to go away and the sun to come out so she can wear it some more. I really love the way this dress came out. I am thinking about making another one with pockets. They will make great summer dresses. So are you sewing along this season?