Why, hello blog. Long time no see. Here is what I have been doing for, oh, I don’t know…the past six twelve weeks or so…(check out the truly awesome tutorial from Homemade Toast here)
Let me first start by giving a warning — have I ever sewn in my life? Yes. In elementary and middle school I took sewing lessons from a woman in a random apartment complex in Louisville (La Fontenay any of my Louisville people?) Once I completed those lessons, however, I pretty much didn’t sew again until toward the end of last year when I got a tad bit Pinterest happy and decided to create these fleece ruffle pants and matching onesie for Vera…
Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend the tutorial as even though I am a highly unexperienced (and very unpracticed) seamstress, I was somehow able to figure out this gown with relatively few setbacks (all my own mistakes, mind you). Don’t look too hard at the pictures…I realize quite a few things are crooked, but I hope to make the Cinderella gown soon and redeem myself with an even better replica. Thanks Homemade Toast!
Oh my gosh, Evelyn would LOVE a dress like this… but there is no way I could make it. No way. I suppose a sewing machine would help and a 24/7 tutor (as well as a 24/7 nanny, cook and housekeeper), but I'm still not sure even then I could pull it off. Maybe I'll solicit the help of my ol' friend Claire…
You can do it! And Claire can definitely do it so together you would be unstoppable (and no doubt with her help you could get it done WAY sooner than I did…I'm thinking she would be way ahead of me given I sewed the skirt TOGETHER a couple times and had to take a seam ripper to the thing more times than I can count…). I love that you can use the same basic pattern and make slight changes to create a ton of different dresses!
Stumbled on your blog and love this dress, thanks for the tutorial link. Plan to make it for my little niece for her Disney trip.
You have just given me hope! I read your comment on Homamade Toast and wanted to take a look. When I read that you hadn't sewn much I was relieved! I am going to attempt to make three of these for two of my triplets and my niece for Christmas. We're going on a Disney cruise in February and I think they will love love it! I'm going to try a different shade of pink for each.
Hi! Great dress! I saw your comment on Homemade Toast as well and you've given me more confidence as well. I have less sewing skills then you do but I am determined to get this dress done. I was wondering if you used the same fabric for the top and bottom of the dress? And did you use costume fabric as well? Thanks!
Thanks guys! I used two different fabrics – a cheap costume satin for the skirt portion and a nicer satin for the bodice (more of a matte versus the shiny like costume satin).
Hi again Amanda! For the gathering part of the skirt, did you use elastic thread? Homemade Toast didn't mention using it. Thanks!
Hey! I just used the elastic thread for the shirred part of the bodice and stuck with regular thread for the skirt's gathers 🙂 How is it going?!
Things are going very slowly… Am still at the shirring part.. 🙂 I had to redo the back part cause I needed it longer than what I already had. I underestimated how much fabric would bunch up.
Thanks for the reply!
Hi Amanda,
Finally finished the bodice! I was wondering about the gathering skirt part again. The skirt is sooo elongated and I'm not exactly sure how to sew that part without closing up the skirt…. Are you actually sewing the folded lines by pinching the folds out and hemming them that way or are you supposed to stitch right on the folded lines.. Which I'm confused about because I have no idea how to fit it that way on my sewing machine without stitching the skirt closed… Hopet hat makes sense. It's a bit challenging to explain. Thanks for any insight you can give me! BTW you can see my progress so far on my blog. 🙂
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Hey – the bodice is looking great!! I stitched directly on the folded part of the skirt, setting my thread tension to the highest possible and longest stitch length. If for some reason it doesn't start gathering from doing that, no worries – you will end up gathering by hand anyway. Make sure you just sew a basting stitch only (don't reverse stitch…just sew straight down without backing up), and leave LONG tails. Then you will want to choose either the top thread or the bottom thread and begin gathering by gently pulling on *only* the top or bottom threads. This should allow you to gather it as much as possible 😀
Thanks! I was a le to get it to work. Unfortunately I think I have to redo the bodice. The armholes are smaller than I intended… I should have picked a larger shirt to draw the template. Grrr….
Grrrr is RIGHT!! I have totally done this…BOOO! I'm glad the skirt has worked out…it is SOOO much fabric.
I don't know if you will even see this, as it's been a few years! But I clicked over to your blog from homemade toast. Between your helpful comments here, the original tutorial, and some youtube videos, I've nearly completed this dress for my almost 2 year old. I think the sleeves have been the hardest for me!! I'm hoping you might remember where you found the gold fabric you used to wrap around the skirt? I've gotten all my supplies from Jo-ann's, but I'm less than impressed with any of their gold options.
All the best!
-Keely
Hey Keely! Thanks so much 😀 The sleeves nearly killed me as well…argh. As for the gold fabric, I'm having a hard time remembering if it was Jo-ann's or Hobby Lobby…I'm thinking it was Jo-ann's, though. I also *love* Fabric.com if you are having trouble finding it at brick-and-mortar places. You could try something like this:
https://www.fabric.com/buy/0392472/tissue-lame-gold
Thanks for reading!!