A while back (a long while) I had a friend ask if I could make a custom dress for her daughter for a wedding. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it time-wise, but when she said she didn’t need it for 9 months, I hopped on board.
She wanted me to create a dress similar to the one that she would be wearing in the wedding, and didn’t want to shop around for a kids version.
This was the inspiration for the dress:
I promptly headed to JoAnn fabrics to see if I could find a pattern with something similar to it so that I didn’t have to start completely from scratch. I found a Butterick pattern that had the nuts and bolts of what I was looking for, Butterick 5980:
The black and white polka dot was from fabric.com. Michael Miller’s Dumb Dot in Black/white. I believe the lining was from JoAnn’s, a basic black, as was the tulle for the petticoat.
Getting back to designing the dress, the challenge was to create a collar and a full back, while still keeping the front fairly similar. The butterick pattern had an option for a bodice, so I used that for the back of the dress. I created a front bodice piece similar to the inspiration piece, and a collar modified from a shirt pattern. I moved the back zipper to the side for ease of construction with the collar.
I like to finish seams with my serger so that it will wash and wear well. I pre washed all of the cotton prior to assembling to make sure the black and white wouldn’t run or fade easily.
The black bow was made out of excess material from the lining and hand-stitched in place.
It turned out well, and I even got it to the recipient with a few months to spare 🙂
Here it is in action with it’s cute model 🙂
That’s all for now!
Happy crafting 🙂
Ingrid