Two More Dresses

As I was looking around the sewing room yesterday I realized that I had two size 5 dresses that I made years ago that need to be sent to my granddaughter. This is made from Children's Corner Charlotte, and if you click on this link and scroll down to the bottom of the page you'll see it. It doesn't look like the pattern, and there is a very good reason for that. Back in 2007 our SAGA group had the designer, Lezette Thomason come and teach us how to draft a change to the pattern and make the dress. We redrafted the front of the dress to have the asymmetrical opening, and added the cute appliquéd leaved to the flower buttons.

 Close up of the leaves and buttons.

This dress is completely lined, and has rick rack up the front and around sleeves and armholes. The weather is starting to get cool in Colorado, but it will still fit next summer. It's a bit windy today, so it was all I could do to get this pictures, so please excuse a bit of fuzziness.

I also found this smocked Christmas dress. It was supposed to have a picture smocked insert, but as this was when I was just starting to smock there was no way I was going to attempt that. So I dug up a niece geometric design and smocked it.

I made the piping from the dress fabric, not the best choice but I couldn't find another fabric that I liked. This was made from the standard Australian Smocking and Embroidery size 5 yoke pattern, and they run quite a bit larger than American patterns. So this will be for Christmas 2014. Also, for some reason I interfaced the bodice. Don't do this, it's way too stiff and heavy. This is quilt fabric, and I certainly won't do that again.  As I look at the details on this dress, I can see how much better at sewing I've become. I'm much fussier and more willing to spend the time to make the garment more precise. It's very instructive to look over the items made in the past and see how you've progressed.

Since I'm such a pack rat, I was actually able to find the scraps from these projects and made bows out of them.

I attached the bows to clips found at Joann's. They come about 15 in a package so I'll make them for quite a while!

Luckily, Loveland, where my daughter lives, wasn't too affected by all the flooding. Now to package all three dresses and get them in the mail.