Girls Princess Dress

Halloween is usually the time when mom's who sew can rock their kids worlds.

As the mom who sews, it's fun to make something you couldn't find in stores, like a minion, Gus Gus the Mouse, Ewok, Max from Where the Wild Things Are, Willow, Ellora Dannon, Link, fox, etc.  

So this year it's kind of lame at our house.

RJ is Spiderman from Costco, and Ellie wanted to be...gasp...a princess.

So lame Ellie!

But she's 2 1/2 and despite my feeling like that costume choice is boring and lame, she kept talking about it.

What's worse, she wanted a pink princess dress.  

I hate pink usually...so I kind of tricked her and went with peach and told her it was pink.

So here it is.

I decided if I was making a princess dress, at least I could design something interesting and fun to sew.

I bought a piping presser foot this past spring after seeing the perfect Peter Pan collar Danielle made and was excited to pipe the crap out of my peach princess dress.

Fabric: peach eyelet that didn't have holes, just the embroidery

3 yds of tulle for skirt

**Using eyelet is nice as the decorative selvage edges can be used as the hems to save time!

The bodice was inspired by Kristin's sunshine dress.

In her tutorial, she uses freezer paper to piece the bodice.

I just drafted a basic bodice front in the freezer paper, added my lines, then cut and ironed them on the fabric.

I traced my cut lines with pink highlighter to help remind me where to add the seam allowances.

When you cut each piece out you add the seam allowances to connect them.

Then I added the aqua piping between as I sewed them back together.

The dress is fully lined and made the piping neckline easy, as the lining acts as a facing to conceal raw seams.

It was fun to design and sew, and she has worn it every day since we finished it.

She'll put it on for a while then abandon it somewhere, then find it again, leaving a path of clothes all around the house.

This is where we get the real Ellie.

Below she's being a dead princess.

Trying to see if she's strong enough to bust her magic wand.

Diva.

Happy Halloween!

I still need to sew a costume for Izzie for tonight.