Blush ruffles

Back in February I started making dresses for Emily (and I will be sharing them with you for the next couple weeks).

Emily loves dresses.  Often in the morning, she refuses the practical shirt and pants I pick out, and insists on one of her dresses.  Since not letting her wear her dress often results in a cranky toddler, I usually let her have her way.  Also, she is fine with tights.  So, dresses are something we need a lot of in this house.  But, most of the dresses hanging in her closet have been getting too small lately.  Which gave me an incentive to make all the dresses that I've been planning in my head, for when she gets bigger.

The first dress I made was out of a couple remnants I got from Vickie right after we moved to Michigan.  Vickie was organizing her sewing room, and had a box of fabric she wasn't attached to, and I found some orange fabric.  So, our family likes orange, Emily included, and I grabbed it up.  I had thought about making it for the fall, but because of the dwindling number of dresses, I made it now.  Which, I'm glad I did, since the more I worked with it, the more I thought it was more of a blush color, instead of a pumpkin orange.

I had planned to use some white cotton fabric to make ruffles on the dress, but ended up using the fabric itself to do the ruffles.

A few down the front

And a ruffle around the bottom edge

I made the pattern of the dress by tracing around a jumper that fits Emily now, but it almost too short.  I added seam allowances, and about 3 inches to the bottom (which turned out to make it the right length for now, but I wanted some growing room so she can wear it for a LONG time, so I added the ruffle to the bottom).

I also tried out one of the fancy stitches that my sewing machine can do: hidden seams.  I used it for the sleeve seam:

I think with a lot more practice the stitches would be less noticeable.  Not that most people are going to stare at the sleeves of a 2 year old.