A Flower Dress

 I'm really excited about this dress that I just made for Chloe. I've been wanting to make this dress for a few months now and finally got around to do it. I first got the idea for this dress when I went wedding gown shopping with a friend. I saw a gorgeous dress and fell in love with it. It's not one I would wear but loved the idea of it, so of course had to make a dress inspired by it for Chloe.

  I'm still working on it though. Appliqueing all of the flowers is taking some time and I wanted it for Chloe to wear on Sunday. Even as it is I think its great. It's also really easy to make. I made the dress and appliqued the front of the dress all in one night. (By the way, the dress is yellow and pink... the pink looks a little red in the photo)

For the top of the dress I just used one of Chloe's dresses to make a pattern and find dimensions. (Make sure to leave enough around to make a seam with!) To make the bottom of the dress I started by making a quick and simple skirt without making a casing for the elastic to go through. Instead of where the casing would be on top, I used the longest stitch on my sewing machine and pulled the thread so it would gather. I then sewed the skirt onto the top of the dress. (One day I might try to do an actual tutorial with step by step pictures but if you can't tell I'm not that great at explaining things) For the flowers I just made them out of chiffon and used the same technique that I used on her other dresses. One thing I have to do is install a zipper in the back. The dress is a little tight on Chloe (I used an old dress for her pattern and didn't realize she grew out of it...oops!) I haven't used a zipper before so that will be the new thing to learn how to do on this dress for me. But I found this tutorial on how to install a zipper, so hopefully it will work. :)

But I love this dress and I think its so fun and flirty and is a great summer dress.

Toddler Flapper Ruffle Dress

Since I threw my husband his 1920's party, I've been a little obsessed with flapper dresses and with feathers. I had the left over fabric from the photo booth from his party, so I thought it'd only be appropriate to turn it into a flapper inspired dress for Chloe. I just made it up as I went, but later I found a tutorial how to make the bottom of the skirt if you want it.

I took an extra black shirt that no one was using and cut out the pattern for the dress. (The fabric was jersey, and I didn't take into consideration that it stretches, so if you use jersey fabric maybe trace it a little smaller than you normally would) My pattern was pretty much a rectangle of the width and length that I wanted the dress, then I cut out holes for the head and arms. I stitched them together and had the base of my dress.

For this next part you can look at this tutorial for better instructions and pictures. I took the black and white fabric and cut it into strips 6" wide and then sewed them together, so I would have 3" wide strips. I pulled the threads to gather the strips to get the ruffle look. I then sewed the ruffles onto the base of the dress.

After sewing the ruffles onto the dress, I cut another thin strip of white fabric (about 2" wide) the width of the dress. I sewed the fabric over the first ruffle to hide the raw edges. I thought that the dress still needed a little bit more, so I decided to sew on a few fabric flowers to the front of the dress. You can look at this previous tutorial to see how to make the ruffled flowers and you can use this tutorial to make the big fabric flower on top. (A way to make the fabric flower easier and faster is to hot glue the petals on instead of sewing each one)

Here's a better close up of the big flower

To complete the look, I made a feather headband to go with the dress. I just bought a bag of white feathers and hot glued them together and stuck them on a clip that I had wrapped with white ribbon. I then glued on an antique looking broach to cover the ends of the feathers. I personally like to make clips for headbands, that way I can just interchange them to match different outfits, but feel free to glue the feathers directly onto the headband instead of a clip. But Chloe LOVES this headband, mainly because the feathers are so soft.

Here's the look put together

A Ruffled Draped Dress

Sorry, this one isn't going to have a tutorial to go with it. I made this one up by myself. Everything that I did to make this dress was a first time for me. It was an almost epic fail of a dress, and sadly I still think that it might be a one time wear dress for Chloe. I also would recommend that if you try to make this dress, don't use the fabric I used for the ruffles. It frays way too much! I think there's some spray on stuff that's like Fray Check so your fabric doesn't fray, and I would definitely recommend it for this dress.

Like I mentioned before, I don't have a tutorial how to make this dress, but I'm still showing the dress here, so I can try to explain the technique of the ruffles, because I couldn't find it anywhere on the web. With that said, if anyone does find a tutorial for this, I'd love to have it.

The dress I made like every other dress, except I made a casing for the top and sewed the bottom to it. I wanted to have the sheer fabric on the entire dress and I also wanted to throw in some flowers in the top. You can check out some of the other dress tutorials if you need instructions on how to put the dress together.

For the ruffles, I cut out a 6" circle and cut a smaller 3" circle inside the big one.

 Then I cut the circle , so I can lay it out straight. Then I sewed the ruffles onto the base of the dress.

Here's the final product:

On her, it looks like a cross of a fairy and Barbie dress, not my intention, but it works :)

A Ruffled Pillow Case Play Dress

Sorry if you guys are getting sick of all the ruffle dresses lately, but I said earlier that I've been obsessed with them lately. I found this tutorial for this dress. It originally was made out of a pillow case. I love that! Here's my version of the pillow case ruffle dress.

And just because here's a close up of the flower :)