An inspired dress for her birthday

Every little girl wants a floaty gossamer princess dress, right?  Especially for her BIRTHDAY, right??

I try to make her a special dress every year for her birthday.  I only missed the 1st birthday, but managed at least one special dress for the rest so far…

This dress came about from Anya choosing a dress from Chasing Fireflies for me to make.  It’s a dress that most mommies are drawn to in the catalog, but the $198 price tag makes it unlikely to ever be bought for less than a very special occasion.

This was the inspiration dress.

The dress is chiffon with a zipper in the back.   I think it is generally used as a flower girl dress or fancy party dress.  It is perfect for her fancy birthday dress that I make her once a year.  With all the different fabrics I used in it, it was probably around $30 to make it…instead of $198 to buy.

I found this embroidered sheer in the curtain fabric area of the fabric store.  It had a beautiful scalloped edge that I wanted to use as the hem on the overskirt.  They didn’t have chiffon to match, so I ordered that on fabric.com.  Happily it was on sale at the time!  I already had the silk duiponi pieces.

I decided to make the overskirt into a partial circle skirt, since it would require less gathering at the waistline.  This meant I needed to cut the scalloped edgeing and then reattached to the circle skirt portion.  Unfortunately, I only had enough edging for the front ruffle, so the back is just a ruffle of the main fabric.

The underskirt is an A-line skirt with the chiffon gathers sewn onto it in the front, with a bottom chiffon ruffle all the way around.  The chiffon gathers took quite awhile.  I hemmed them, gathered them and then stitched the rows onto the cut up front.  Just a little time consuming.

This dress took me a bit of thinking how the design would work out.  This bit of silk at the neckline is not as easy to put on as it looks.  First, I had to sew it to the bottom of the neckline.  Then, I had to snip the cornes of the bodice fabric and turn them at 90 degree angles to finish it up.

It has stretch and not stretch fabrics, along with a zipper in the back and a split front.  The fabric stretched a bit when putting in the zipper.   A walking foot may have helped, but I don’t have one.

I try to make Anya’s outfits as comfortable, as possible.  This seems to fit the bill.  She tried it on and then wore it the rest of the day!

I did take a few pictures while I was sewing up the dress, but honestly this is not an easy one to describe how to make it.  Here are the pictures I took while creating it, though.

I am pretty happy with how this one turned out, and very importantly…so is Anya!