I Hate This Dress!

No, I don't hate it.  My kid, however, does.  With a passion.

This is the absolutely darling Play Date pattern by Oliver + S.  Pretty much everything I sew is Oliver + S, so it's not really unexpected.

One of the smart sewists on the Oliver + S forum came up with the "Make It While It Fits" challenge to use all the un-used patterns in our stashes before the release of the new season's.  A great idea it was, so I jumped on the bandwagon.  I still have several patterns that I haven't used, and the Play Date pattern only goes to a 3T, so this was the first one I attempted.

I chose some Eleanor Grosch fabric from Free Spirit (conveniently located in my shop! - www.the-fabric-stash.com).  I have some really cute turquoise shoes in my eBay wish list in preparation for this outfit.  I used Kaffe Fasset shot cotton for the piping and the hem facing.  I reviewed every single photo of the play date dress in the flickr group before doing this pattern.

I got the idea to do embroidery on the yoke instead of buttons or ruffles.  I tried a couple of patterns that didn't work for me.  Sometimes it's harder than it looks to choose the right embroidery pattern to match the fabric.

The pattern is of course extremely well thought out and well written.  There was one spot finishing up the back seam of the yoke where I had to really ponder how it was going to go together, but once I actually read the instructions rather than just look at the pictures, it ended up perfect.

I had tried the dress on Julia a couple of times while I was putting it together.  I wanted to make sure it fit over her head, and wanted to check the fit.  For some reason, that made her hate the dress.  I think she could use a size 4 in this pattern as well, so maybe it fit tighter than her usual dress.  I really can't figure out a two year old psyche.

I made this over Saturday and Sunday, maybe about 4 hours total.  It went together very well, and when it was completed, I made the suggestion to my child that she put on the dress, and we go across the street to the beach and take some photos.  ABSOLUTE MELT DOWN.  Screaming.  Yikes.  It is amazing how passionately she feels about things.

Once she calmed down and became a human being again, she agreed to wear the dress, briefly, in her sister's bedroom only.  I did get some fairly good modeled photos after all:

What a silly kid.....I'm hoping that if I put this hanging in her closet for a while, she'll change her mind....otherwise, I'll be looking for a size 3 kid with the first initial "J" to hand this down to!

Maybe I should be using my sewing machine features....

I got my sewing machine because it could do embroidery.  I used to have an embroidery machine, and before it finally died, got tons and tons of use out of it, between decorating my older children's clothes, making gifts, and doing items to sell.  I have a bunch of design cards, and my machine has a bunch of built in designs.  I've had this machine close to a year now, and I have only used embroidery to do a couple of monograms.

I need to work on that!

I started with a perfect pattern for some embroidery - the Ice Cream top from Oliver + S.  I used Kaffe Fasset shot cotton.  It's WONDERFUL fabric - very soft, easy to work with.  The lavender is actually created with light blue thread woven with pink thread.  It's totally cool.

I had this idea that I wanted the butterfly to go from one side to another.  I didn't want them to just be in a line, so I staggered them....I thought the idea was good initially, then when I was working on it, I thought it was bad....when I finally put the shirt together, I decided it was a good idea!

The top is a size 2T with 3T plus another inch length.  I did toy with the idea of making a dress, and embroidering butterflies along the bottom panel as well....but, each butterfly takes 10 minutes to embroider, and I got lazy.