Mommy Made Project #7- Mother Goose Bubble Dress

This project is different from all the others. So far my outfits have (for the most part) come out of one pattern envelope. They are from See & Sew pattern #3889. It even has the words "Yes! It's Easy!" written across it. And really, when compared with the other "easy" patterns I've been looking at, it is significantly less complicated and has fairly clear instructions (from the point of view of someone who knew absolutely nothing starting out).

See & Sew #3889 came with a dress pattern, a shirt pattern and a pants pattern. When I sewed the last pattern I made the shirt longer, but haven't changed much else. This however was my first real "experiment." Technically you could say that I used a pattern. I took the shirt pattern from the envelope and cut out the outside shell of the top in the Mother Goose Fabric. Then, instead of just doing a little lining like the pattern calls for, I cut out the same outside size in red, so that the entire thing was lined.

After that I made a red "belt" divider that I sewed to the outside and the inside of the top. I also doubled the size of the straps and made the outside red and the bottom side mother goose (the little thin straps are just such a pain to turn right side out and I like how they look when they are slightly thicker).

Once that was done I made two giant squares that were part mother goose material (about 75%) and part red (about 25%), sewed them together and gathered them into a skirt. I knew that the top was going to be long (according to the picture I had in my head), but I misjudged the skirt (I was picturing something a little shorter). When I tried it on Sadie after stitching everything together it touched the tops of her feet. It wasn't quite what I had in mind for a play dress (you can see the picture of it before I changed it at the very bottom).

So I decided to make the skirt into a "bubble skirt." I understitched the lining down and then pinned the skirt up next to the lining so it was half the length it had been before. I had to pleat it every few inches, because the bottom was so much wider than the top, but it worked perfectly and it gave the skirt a lot of bounce.

Here's the end result:

Sadie still wasn't really cooperating when the camera came out!

Brushing her hair before Mass. The pants made it warm enough (with a sweater) to wear out today. Although it hadn't started snowing at that point!

Constant motion! Sadie does her "hummingbird" dance. We've had a lot of hummingbirds around here lately.

The dress before I fixed the length. Even Sadie wasn't overly impressed with it!

Now on to my next project! I'm thinking red and white striped pants with a blue and white star top. I still have more of my patriotic material to use. Sadie is going to be ready for the summer holidays this year!