Tuesday, June 22, 2010

K's new "In the Garden" dress

I came across this blog (From and Igloo) the other day, and I knew I had to make that dress for K. Luckily I had also found some fabric that I loved. Here is my end result.

Here is a picture of the back. You can see that the dress ties through a button hole in the back of the dress, so easy and so cute. The back is also made using a technique called shirring. There are lots of tutorials on shirring but this one is the one I initially used. It is just basically using elastic thread in the bobbin of your machine and sewing. It is sooo cool. The fabric just gathers as you sew. (As a side note check out this blog if you have a Brother machine and have struggled shirring, this saved me from throwing my machine out the window.)
Here is the front of the dress. Christine at From and Igloo did a great job with the instructions, it is basically a formula you plug your own measurements into. K is insanely skinny, and tall, so I could make this dress long and slender just for her. The straps are also adjustable in length so she should be able to wear it for awhile. (It would have been better to have my little model wear the dress, but you get what you can get)
The dress was really easy to make, I did it all in one evening. You do need some basic sewing skills, but her instructions are pretty good. My only change is I used a serger for the inside hems, but that is it.

Have fun!