Christmas dress in border print

Small dresses is what made me want to sew. One of the first things I sewed totally on my own was a dress (which is unblogged) for my eldest. In the subsequent years I have sewed a lot of different types of items but small dresses still have a special place in my heart. In this post I show you the two latest additions to my girls wardrobes.

In blogland I had seen several dresses made of cotton with a border print. I wanted my girls to have such dresses and ordered a few different fabrics with border prints. The main dress I am showing you today is made from Michael Miller Origami Oasis (which I bought at Fabric.com). I bought one and a half yard to make a dress for my middle daughter. It is my first dress in woven cotton combined with long sleeves. I somehow always assumed that those long sleeves without stretch would not be comfortable, and chose to focus on knit dresses for long sleeves. In blogland I saw several long sleeved dresses in woven cotton and I decided to try it myself. The bodice part is the upper part of a Louisa dress (of which I used the same size earlier for a dress in knit). The sleeves fit perfectly and she can easily move her arms. If you were also doubting if you should make your playful girl a long sleeved dress, I can assure you, just do it.

 

The skirt part, I made by cutting the border from the fabric over the entire length and ruffled it to fit the bodice. I did not make side seams and simply put the seam at the back.  I added handmade pipping that was left from an earlier project. I did not line the dress (I have an earlier bad experience with lining, and did not want re-try it in my first long sleeves woven cotton dress) and finished the neckline with a piece of handmade bias of which I had made the pipping.

The dress quickly got a twirl test.


After cutting the fabric for the dress I saw that I still had a relatively large piece of bird fabric left. I therefore re-used the (free) Janneke pattern and managed to cut a Janneke for my youngest out of the "scraps". The dress I made my youngest earlier still fits perfectly.

I also managed to make a few pictures of them together. As you can see from the behind picture, I managed to find two spots in the fabric where I could easily put my invisible zipper without decapitating birds.

The dresses will probably be worn over Christmas. Therefore, besides linking up to sew and show from StraightGrain I also link up this post to the Project Run and Play Christmas link up.

Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).