It seems we have a burgeoning fashionista in the house. In January my daughter saw this fabric being offered by one of my favorite hosts, and fell in love.
When the fabric got here in March, I downloaded the coloring pages from Ellie and Mac, and then used MS Paint to reduce them until several of them could fit on one page. My daughter told me she wanted an "off the shoulder dress, like Sleeping Beauty," from this fabric so I delved into my pattern files (yes, I own almost all of these already; no I haven't sewn a single one) and sketched out the pattern views most likely to fit the bill. This is what I came up with:
I showed these to my daughter, and she picked the Midsummer Dream by Striped Swallow Designs.
My execution on the waistband ended up a little shaky: the Aurora is designed for negative ease, the Midsummer's dream is not, so my waistbanded ended up a little bulky. I also underestimated how much ease I would want *above* the waistband when I calculated total length.
But although this dress doesn't meet *my* exacting standards, my daughter is thrilled. She picked the fabric, she chose the concept, and she loves the final product.
I mean, seriously; just look at the smile on that face! She loves that she can adjust the upper flounce up and down, she loves that it twirls, and she loves the fact that it has most of her favorite LOL dolls on it.
Oh, and one final entertaining bit about this dress; by pure happenstance, the flounce and the bodice line up to give one doll a color change halfway through. If it'd been an actual seam that lined up like that, I would have purchased a lotto ticket that day. But for a lucky flounce, I'll just settle for showing pictures of my good fortune online!
So, for a dress that had a few flaws in the execution, it still ended up making not one, but two people happy overall. What a nice surprise!
Beautiful dress and beautiful girl!
ReplyDeleteSewing work and fashion design not withstanding, that color is fantastic on Autumn. Her ability to describe a style she wants "off the shoulder" and pick it out from a sketch is an amazing leap from vision to reality. I like your inset waistband idea to make the fabric go farther and it certainly was serendipitous that the flounce face lined up with the bodice face. I am not familiar with the term negative ease so you will have to educate me when we talk. Great job, once again.
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