¡Feliz cumpleaños!

I'm seriously considering renaming the blog "Desperation Sewing", as nearly every post includes some reference to my being stressed about a project because I procrastinated for too long.  This week's lesson: If waiting to start something until the day before it needs to be mailed, make sure you have enough matching thread, or you'll have to do most of the sewing on the designated mailing day and will have to drive way across town to the one post office that accepts mail after 5:30pm.


On to the project!  A birthday dress for the younger of my two nieces, who turns nine on Sunday.  This is the Feliz from Sewing Clothes Kids Love.  It was also available as an individual pattern from Farbenmix, but I believe they discontinued it when the book was released.

Front

I had wanted to use the outer print for E's birthday dress, when I was going to make her a Kyoko (which just came out in tween and misses sizes, btw.  I think there are matching dresses in our future.  Yes, I'm a nerd.  And I'm cool with it), but I couldn't find a coordinating fabric that I liked.  I was excited to find this fun floral this time around.

Back

Overall it went together pretty smoothly.  I did get confused about the straps, which were the second-to-last step, when I thought I was nearly done.  There is a front and back piece, as well as facings, and I wasn't sure if I was putting them together the right way.  This sewalong was incredibly helpful!  I think next time I'll eliminate the seam at the shoulder. I assume it's there for some reason dealing with the grainline, but I didn't really care for the bulk the seam allowances.  After that I had trouble with strap placement.  The line drawings in the book don't show the straps in the same spot as the mark on the front bodice.  Fortunately the photos of the dress showed that part pretty clearly (the mark is correct).  And then I didn't have the back strap placement marked at all!  The notch is only marked on the largest pattern size, so if you make it in a smaller size, watch out for that and make sure you transfer it.

I didn't make any changes to the pattern, but did include two optional features.  One was to have a few inches of the sash, which is sandwiched between the two layers of the dress, be elastic, so the wearer doesn't have to retie the sash every time she puts it on. I thought that was a clever idea.  I also included the facings on the back sides of the overdress.  It seemed more finished with them, rather than just hemming the sides.

I think this is the kind of dress that really needs to be modeled to not look like a sack.  It has a lot of twirl factor going for it! When I asked O. if he wanted to see the dress before I packaged it up, he misunderstood me said, "I'm not putting that on!", so no action shots.  Hee.


Next week is the Kids Clothes Week Challenge.  I have a couple of spring/summer outfits planned for E.  The boy doesn't need much, but he does have some buddies with birthdays coming up, so I'm going to see what he thinks about making them fun tees.  I wanted to make a shirt for myself for the Spring Top Sewalong, but it's not looking likely, as it's O's birthday tomorrow, and I also have to make an Abe Lincoln costume in the near future.  ?!?


P.S. Anyone know why my first two pics look so blurry?  They're really not.  They're clickable, if you want to see them in their larger, non-blurred glory.  Found a fix here, although it's a bit of a pain to have to edit the HTML.