My sister, Patricia is in town this week from GA and on short notice she decided to throw Audrey her 4th b-day party on Sunday evening.
I’ve never sewn for anyone else, ever! But on a whim, I decided that I wanted to make a cute little dress for Audrey.
This is my youngest niece, Audrey. She just turned 4.
One of the gifts she received was princess band aids which she promptly tore open and put on her chin.
I had this striped cotton fabric (from Ikea) in my stash for quite some time. I don’t have a ton of prints or kid-like fabrics but this one fit the bill perfectly and I love these bright colors on her.
I wanted to make a dress, but since I was short on time, it had to be super easy (yet cute). I did some mega searching on Craft’s blog but ultimately settled on a tutorial I saw on Sew Mama Sew by J Casa*handmade. Direct tutorial dress (pdf) pattern here.
The long and short of the directions: Cut 1 large rectangle of fabric for the body and another for the straps. The straps get folded and top stitched and the dress gets many rows of shirring using elastic thread in the bobbin to scrunch things up nicely. Assemble, hem and you’re done! What’s great about this pattern is that (theoretically) it can grow with your child transitioning from a dress to a tunic or top due to the elastic shirring.
Bodice Detail:
I love how the white stripe nearly falls at the waist! I oriented my cutting based on the red and pink stripes on the bodice, but having that white line fall perfectly at the waist was wonderful, dumb luck. :)
Inside bodice detail, back: 
This dress only has 1 seam line which is positioned at the center back. The seaming happens after doing the shirring. As a result, it made serging the shirred area quite tricky. If I were to make this again, I would be serging the seam allowances first.
Strap detail:
The top of the bodice isn’t bias binding but it’s just the top of the fabric folded over twice. Since my fabric was stripped, the top red stripe acts as a seam binding. I put in two lines of stitching here to help with daily wear and tear (and washing wear and tear) on the dress.
Little girls (well most girls of all ages, really) like pretty dresses. Audrey was happy to receive her dress, but knowing candy is one of the best gifts for kids, I stuffed a few treats into the pockets.
I gave her pop rocks and some gummy bears…. which were a big hit!
Fitting the dress:
Until I was tieing the straps of the dress on Audrey, I had no idea if it was going to fit her or not. Length nor width! heh Luckily the dress fit perfectly, but it could have stood to be hemmed a bit shorter. But at least she’ll get some good use out of it as she’ll most likely get a lot taller.
Happy Birthday little Miss Audrey!
Update: Felix has more images of Audrey and the rest of the fam/party on his site here if you care to take a look.
In: Sewing
Comments (16)