Pinafore dress

My sister in law Charlee made Carla a really cute pinafore dress & bloomers.

With Easter approaching, I was excited for her to wear it....but after trying it on her, I realized it won't be fitting her until summertime. Bummer.

I started browsing pinterest and found a tutorial on making the pinafore dresses. This style is a favorite for me, because it can be worn as a tunic after she outgrows it as a dress, and I love how breezy it is for our hot Wuxi summers. The tutorial seeme easy and included a PDF pattern. The only problem was that I have no way of printing it. I pulled out the pinafore that Charlee made and used it as my guide, scaling the pattern down by 1/4" all the way around. 

Next I dug into my fabric stash (it is a pitiful stash compared to what I had back in the USA), and found two coordinating prints. I cut, sewed & pressed the dress in less than twenty minutes. I was undecided on whether to use snaps or buttons and ultimately chose to sew buttons on both sides of the dress and cut button holes--which were then sewed by hand, since my cheap machine doesn't do button holes--on the straps. 

This afternoon, she modeled it for me. I'm super happy with how it turned out since this was my first time scaling a pattern down. 

                                        [pinafore dress: front view]

                                          [pinafore dress: rear view]

I forsee many of these dresses in her summer wardrobe.