My Final Roller Skate Dress...

Well, for now.

My kid now has three Roller Skate Dresses, and two Roller Skate Tunics.  Enough already.

This one is meant for the first day of school - this year, Julia is going to a new school.  She's spent the last two years at a great school, but now she's going to head off to the Montessori school that her brother attended.  I'm really a believer in the whole Montessori thing, especially for a kid like mine who has a November birthday, and won't be eligible to attend kindergarten until she's almost six.  I worry that she'd get bored with yet another year of the same pre-school stuff.  I hope I'm making the right decision....

Anyways, I decided to make a dress based on what Julia's working on right now - writing her letters.  She can pretty much write her name so that someone could recognize it, and she can identify a few letters, every once in a while.

The dress, again, is the Oliver + S Roller Skate Dress.  This is made in a 3T, out of a lightweight stretch corduroy, lined with a bed sheet that I'm now using to line just about everything.

So, I can make this dress with my eyes closed.  For this one, I decided to add a practice writing paper border which I painstakingly satin stitched over a couple of days.  The letters are not perfect.  But, neither are my 3 year old's!

It's really soft and comfortable, and since I know my kid likes this pattern, I was pretty sure she'd be up for a modelling session...which, she was!

The back has a really cool pink button with little beads that go around that I've been hoarding in my button stash forever....this was the perfect project for it!  Again, I used a little hair elastic instead of trying to make a button loop out of fabric - it's much easier, and looks really cute.

Here's a close-up of the satin stitching - hardly perfect, but does work.....

I've got a bunch of other back-to-school projects piled up and ready to go....ready for a new school year!