Sister Dresses (Sort of)

Some projects just seem to go on and on - one problem/solution leading to another and this pair of dresses is a good example.

I didn't intend to make two dresses, but that's what happened.

Here's my inspiration:

This is a portion of project "Dressing Diamantina", that I discovered on the fantastic V and E Historic Costuming blog. There are over a dozen patterns for a variety of children's outfits including underpinnings and they are all free!

While I loved the style, I was not making this dress in white - the young lady it's intended for is a bit too rough and tumble, she needed something a bit more utilitarian. I was gifted with a length of pink/black/green plaid and I have yards and yards of green cotton wavy braid in my stash - perfect for this project.

So I printed the pattern, cut my fabric and sewed it up (it went together beautifully), but...

It was way to small for the seven year old in question.

Time to size up the pattern, and now I'm running short of fabric. The bottom ruffle and the bias binding have many, many places where it's been pieced.

In the meantime, my husband makes the observation that the first dress would probably fit another little one in our group - so now I'm finishing two dresses.

The wavy braid took a fair amount of time too; I intentionally trimmed each dress a bit differently and neither is done as the inspiration dress.


But I'm left without enough fabric to bind the edges or to add a ruffle to the little dress:

Thus the contrasting binding and the fake "ruffle".

The "stash" yielded some really cute glass buttons made to look like thread buttons.

I had a set of black glass buttons I has intended to use on the larger dress, but I did not like the way they looked at all. So now I had to make buttons - the full button story is here.



I'm pleased to finally be done and pleased with the final result(s). I'll be seeing the recipients (who aren't sisters) in a couple weeks and I hope they'll be pleased too!