Practice Birthday dress

Just about a month until the little monster's birthday! I've decided I can make her a cute simple little dress to wear for her party, so I've been searching for a good pattern/tutorial. It has to be simple, I just am not very good at clothing and patterns and whatnot. In my searching, I came across this snappy toddler dress tutorial which is wonderful, simple, downloadable, and free :) I fell in love with it immediately and I think it will just be perfect for a birthday dress for July. However, I would be stupid to just go ahead and make it with the birthday fabric a month beforehand (who knows when the next growth spurt is coming) without trying it to make sure I can do it and it fits. And I am certainly glad I did!

It is a really great pattern, and was not difficult at all. The pattern pieces are for 12-18 months which is exactly the size she needs, but for some reason, it came out pretty small. I have a hard time getting it over her head, my own fault really because I messed up a button hole (I have a snap thing now so we are saved for the birthday version!) so one side is sewn together which makes it more difficult, but really it is just too tight around the arms once it is on. I doubt it will fit for long. I can take out the seams a bit in the body since I did a french seam instead of zig-zagging so that should add a bit, but I think I am going to have to enlarge the pattern pieces for the neck part. No big deal. It came out really well and she got to wear it to the park yesterday and someone actually asked me where I got it! The fabric is from Ikea, they had it on sale for $1.99/yd so that pretty much makes this a $1 dress, tops since I'm not even sure I used 1/2 yd, so it's okay if it doesn't fit for long. It is also a bit short, pretty much a shirt really, but I knew that was coming. I have limited birthday dress fabric and I wanted to know how far it would go, so for that one I will probably add a band of fabric at the bottom to lengthen it and once the straps are longer, it will fall down further anyway.

The red buttons on this really make it I think


And of course an action shot! She didn't seem to mind it being tight around the arms so I guess it's not too bad.


Oh that girl kills me with cute! I also made the shorts so that post is coming up next. I am having a good time learning to make some simple kids clothes. I am making another dress right now too, hopefully done sometime this week. It is my first attempt at making a pattern using existing clothes so hopefully it works! There will be some really cute clothes on a really cute little girl coming up around here in the future. It helps me have quick projects in between my quilts so I can keep up the motivation :) Oh and it keeps my little girl clothed!