Hoppin' to it!

I was in a productive mood. I keep weird hours - okay I am a TOTAL night owl. I stay up past 2am and sleep till noon or later. I get things done, but I just do them at different times of the day than normal folks. I get my morning coffee at lunch time. I eat lunch when the kids get home from school. I have a midday snack when they're eating supper. And after they go to bed I get some down time to just create. Today though, I started my creating early in the day.

The first thing I did was grab the green fabric I bought to match a bit of ribbon I got 20 years ago. There was a ribbon outlet down south of us at an outlet mall, and their big 'deal' was to stuff a zipper bag full for a flat rate. Well you can imagine I packed in as much ribbon as I could - some was remnant, some was tangled ribbon off-the-spool, and quite a bit of the massive mound of ribbon was damaged bits that the manufacturers still wanted to get a buck or two off of. I have a tight roll of 3" wide white satin ribbon begging for a project - probably five or more yards, at least. But the ribbon I have been most eager to use has been the 2" wide green satin ribbon. A great deal of it has a fold and discoloration, but enough of this ribbon was in good shape that I was able to use it for this dress. The rest just fell into place.

Matching pacifier, how cool is that!

I had the yellow fabric for the lining from a $1/yard sale at a craft and fabric store in Cali, back when I did a lot of Ren Faire. The frogs and turtles was a recent purchase, it sort of jumped into my cart off the shelves at Wal-Mart (I hear all you sewing mavens gasping and groaning - but my options are limited, as is my budget).



The buttons were from my stash of new buttons, not intended for this fabric. I had a pair of lime green buttons, because when I bought this I intended to make another reversible A-line dress and put another fun fabric on the back side - so I only needed the two green buttons. But I needed four buttons for this dress, so I had to go with what I had. I don't think they look too bad, they pull some of the blue accents out of the dress. it works.
 I made a basic bodice - actually used the pattern I drew up for the A-line dress, but changed the sides of the bodice so they were straighter, more fitted, and then split the back and added an inch to each center mark so there would be an overlap for the buttons. So there are three bodice pieces (six if you count the lining.) The skirt is in three panels, each double the width of each bodice panel, basted and gathered (draw up the bobbin thread to 'scrunch') to the right width.

The bodice's bottom edge sandwiches the top of the skirt, holding all those gathers in place. Then, because I think that edge looks kinda drab, the ribbon is added as a sash. I left the front of the ribbon sash wide, but gave the sides (just under arms) a little pinch and hand-stitched them into place. Then the ribbon just ties into a great big bow in back. The hem is simply blind-stitched, by hand.

When I make another little dress like this I may photograph along the way and try to make some sort of rudimentary tutorial, because as a NON-sewing person, tutorials have been a great help for me. I don't know all the terminology or all the tricks of the trade, but I have had fun coming up with things for Miss Maeven to wear.

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I think she enjoys her new dresses too.