Cheerful Spring Dress




Let's just start by saying- I love to design things! I really do! My mind is constantly whirling with new ideas. The pictures above shows the simple beginnings of one of these whimsical schemes.



For this particular dress, I wanted a design with an airy, light look. I wanted it to be fully lined and to have some of my newly learned smocking techniques on it. I also wanted a full circle skirt! However, in order to do this, I needed to have a lot of fabric!  I believe I used a little over 10 yards of material for this dress! But, of course that includes the lining. To buy this much material, I had to buy something fairly inexpensive. A soft, off-white, muslin did the job beautifully.

Making the pattern pieces was most certainly my favorite part! I will reluctantly  admit  however, I didn't fully design every piece for this dress.  I wish I did! Instead, I took pieces from three other patterns  I used in the past. I altered these to fit together and changed the pieces to flow with my idea. For example, I took an old 50's circle skirt dress pattern of my mom's and altered it so that it was wider at the waist and shorter in length. That part wasn't hard, but the bodice was! For the bodice piece ( shown above), I had to do it over several times. The pattern piece I used as my foundation was a tightly pleated top with no gathering on the top or bottom at all. I had to make the piece much wider on the bottom and top and incorperate enough room to smock the gathers together. I cut the neck line down a bit to give it a softer scoop neck too.                    

Once I figured out the pattern pieces, I was excited to start out with some smocking. I gathered up the bottom and top of the bodice and mapped out my smocking plan.



To have my embroidery floss, for the smocking, match my material, I had to dye it. So I dyed it with black tea! That was grand fun! It came out matching quite well!



Next I smocked the bodice top the best I could. I made a row of little diamonds and a small diamond on the bottom of the bodice.

the small diamond

The sleeves were the hardest thing for me to do. I wanted to make them flowy and loose, but because it ended up looking awkward on the dress, I added elastic to the bottom of the sleeve and made them into little cap sleeves instead. I didn't have a pattern of any sort to to use as a base for the sleeves so it took me a while to get them exactly how I liked them.



I've always loved chinese buttons on outfits I've seen, but I didn't know how to make them. I tried my best to create these. I like the way they turned out, but there were a ton to do!

To add a little frill, and since it was a bit too big around the waist, I added little ties at the sides.

a picture of the full skirt (great for dancing!)