Cristy's Nature Journal : What I Have Been Working On

While my husband has been busy doing the "whole room makeover" for our middle daughter, I have been trying to make her a dress.

She really wanted me to make her a dress for her birthday this year. My son hosts all these complicated birthday parties, like the Angry Bird Party. My daughter is not all about that kind of stuff at all. But she did say that a "princess dress" would be nice.

One day, while we were out, I decided to take her by the fabric store. I wanted her to pick out the pattern, the material and the buttons for the dress. She picked this pattern. She wanted view D. That's the dress on the bottom right of the picture. (The reason it is so wrinkled is that my youngest daughter poured water on it. Argh.)

Do you see that circle in the top corner of the pattern? It says easy. Don't let that fool you. This is the hardest dress I have ever made. (And I learned to sew when I was 13. Too many years ago.) It has over 60 steps. It is fully lined, meaning that you essentially have to make the dress twice. It has puffy sleeves that were a bugger to put in. I had to take them out three times to get them right. It also has a very ruffly ruffle on the underskirt. That was also very difficult to put in. It took hours just for the ruffle.

I have really expanded my sewing ability with this one, and because she tends to be unusually short, this is a dress that will fit her exactly, because it was made to her measurements.

My middle daughter picked this material.

The bugger of a ruffle. 72 inches times 4. That's how long it
is.

My wonderful mother-in-law gave me an hour a week for the last four weeks to work on the dress while she kept all the kids. This really helped me concentrate on the pattern in the areas that were really beyond my abilities.

I even had to install a continuous lap. I have sewn for years and have never even heard of this monstrosity of a sewing technique. I read and re-read through the pattern, but could NOT figure out how to install this thing. My husband finally said, "Look it up on Youtube." Bingo. A video made everything much easier to understand, but even in the video, the lady said, "this is not simple to install, but here's the trick." Oy.

It turned out to be a gorgeous dress and my little girl will look stunning in it. So it was worth all the trouble.