31 Days: Color – Day 12: Purple Long Dress

So, Day 11’s post was all about peacocks and practice. Day 12 is about purple and patterns.

BG loves long dresses. It’s all because of Frozen. “Elsa doesn’t wear short dresses, she wears LOOOOOOOOONG dresses and fancy shoes.” So all summer, there was a progression of dress wearing once the laundry was done – she started with the longest dress in her closet and then moved progressively shorter as she ran out of options. (Laundry was done every 3-4 days, so there were only a handful of dresses in rotation for the last few months.)

I realized one of her dresses was a simple shape made out of t-shirt material. “I could make another one like that,” I thought. Ha! So I thrifted a large women’s shirt in hopes of making a long dress for BG. Now I am not much of a pattern girl. I’m more of a “make-it-up-as-you-go” kind of girl. But this seemed pretty straightforward. I traced the existing dress onto easel paper, adding 1/4″ for seams.

I cut out the pieces. I sewed the straps and sides of the bodice together first. I knew the skirt would be larger than the bottom of the bodice, so I used this technique to create gathers. I thought (and rethought and thought some more) about how to pin the pieces together to make sure it was sewn correctly (wrong facing wrong or right facing right?). I was sure I had it figured out, so I sewed it together.

Nope. That wasn’t it. This is the seam but it’s on the outside of the dress. But it was 15 minutes until we needed to pick up BB at school, and I was determined to finish. I pressed open the seam and did a quick zigzag stitch in hopes of it resembling a ruffle.

The edges of the bodice were still raw, so I used the leftover sleeve fabric to make casings for the arm and neck holes. It isn’t perfect, but it worked okay. However, the overall look of the garment is not great. I don’t have much experience (er, “practice“) working with knits, and in the end, I realized that knit dresses are much easier (and probably cheaper) to buy than to make. (But, maybe I would feel differently if I had more practice.)

You can’t tell from the crossed arms, but BG actually loves the dress. It’s longer than her other “Long Dress” – and, of course, it goes so well with her princess shoes.