Showing posts with label Pinafore dress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pinafore dress. Show all posts

Saturday, April 12, 2014

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.