Alice in Cotton

Thank goodness for babies that grow! Apparently my newest Niece, V, is quite the grower. At 5 months old, she had already blown through all her 6-month-sized clothing, including her Dress for a Darryl Fan. Not optimal, but also not a bad excuse to go buy more fabric either. Like a good auntie, I headed straight for Custom Knit Destash on Facebook.

V's Dad loves horror movies, and V is her Mom's third daughter, so I've been given the green light to indulge Dad's taste. Which I did. This Dark Alice print was originally from BerryPosh Custom Designs, and I was in a hurry, so Tie Dye Diva Baby Peasant it was.

I think the most important thing I learned with this dress is, don't do a folded ruffle with 12oz Jersey spandex. Even with topstitching, the resulting ruffle had a life of its own, and it took me several minutes with the iron to tame it for pictures. Not the optimal gift for a couple with 5 children.

But on the bright side, if my BIL loves this dress as much as I think he will, I'm betting he will ALSO learn to love the iron: at least when it comes to ironing the ruffles on his little girl's dress, anyway. And someone else to do the ironing is a gift V's mom can get behind, I'm sure!

A Dress for a Rebel Princess

My daughter had such a blast trying on her friend's dress that I knew I had to repeat the experience, ASAP. I know I sound like a broken record touting Sweet N Charmed fabric, but they really had my number earlier this year. Hilariously, I was actually going to skip this fabric until my daughter saw it, and SHE was the one who asked me to preorder it, back in July.

 

Also in the "Gee, where have I heard of THAT before" category is Simple Life Pattern Co; Originally I wanted to do a Paisley with this fabric (like the dress I made for my friend's kid), but the Rebel Princess in this panel was just too tall to make it work in my daughter's size. I had to go back to the Isla with the dropped waist option if I wanted to keep both the death star and the princess' feet, which I did.

The Isla also doesn't have a pattern for a contrasting neck band per se (it's intended to be lined), but someone in the facebook group was kind enough to share her method for making a neck band. It basically consisted of cutting a strip that was 1.75" wide by 85% of the total neckline length + Seam allowance, sewing it closed and then attaching it to the shirt as you would a regular neckband. Which I did, and I ended up very happy with the result.

So was my daughter! She's a size 5 on a good day and I made it a size 6 to give her room to grow. I am really happy with how the fabric placement worked out, and I forgot to take a picture but as with every dress I make for her, this too has pockets.

Little A has charmed me by treating this as a special occasion dress, wearing it to parties at daycare and declaring it her "Comic Con Dress" because the first time she wore it was, in fact, when I took the kids to Wizard World Comic Con earlier this year. As it happens (and yes, it was totally unplanned), all our best nerd outfits were handmade by me. A was especially excited to meet not just Rey, but also the inspiration for the fabric of her dress.

I'm not sure I quite met the initial goal of this project - I don't think it ended up with the same whirling, twirling, swingy-skirt factor as the Power Up Dress, probably because of the dropped waist - but that's the kind of problem that can always be solved with more sewing later. In the meantime, it's fun to see this dress be loved.