Care Bear Dresses

I know my nieces already have tons of cute dresses, but one of the perks of Seamstressing for yourself is, you get to create matching outfits. I initially resisted the call of this Bears that Care fabric in pink, but when Firefliez Fabrics had a Black Friday sale at 30% off, my self-control faded. Who can resist outfits for brother and sister in the same fabric, different colorways!

I only bought one yard (custom knits are expensive!), so I was faced with the challenge of how to get two dresses out of one yard of fabric. Enter the Violet Tunic by Peekaboo Patterns, acquired from Etsy. The silhouette reminded me of a cute photo of my niece in a candy-cane-like red and white striped dress at Christmas, and the construction looked pretty straightforward. So I bought it (and, uh, a bunch of other stuff) at the Peekaboo Etsy Shop. As I had suspected, it was a pretty quick make.

As it stands, I think I'm acquiring the level of proficiency where I *don't* have to follow a pattern exactly. I skipped the pockets on this one (sacrilege, I know) and both dresses came together pretty quick. I did a 4T for V, and an 18m for L. The above photo was the front, and the below photo is the back.

Since the pattern was so straightforward, I didn't have much in the way of feedback. I found it marginally annoying that seam allowances were all over the place (default 1/2, dress side seams in 3/8", neckband 1/4") but since I'm a consummate instruction-reader it was just annoying and not problematic.

I also used this project to try out a new skill: double needles. I'd been admiring them on the hems of shirts as of late, and it seemed a good solution to the problem where the seam allowance inside the neck likes to pop up, but I don't trust a triple stitch to be sufficiently stretchy.

My first try with "universal" double needles from my local sewing store resulted in skipped stitches, so that was out; but persistence prevailed, and 2 days later (ie, the time it took the needles to ship),I tried again with some Schmetz Stretch Twin Needles from Amazon. The "stretch" needles worked out great, and is the final result:

And here's the smaller dress (for L, who is 2), paired with the Kimono for my nephew. They make a cute set!

Now, all that's left is to hope that they all fit - at the same time, preferably.