Spring dresses

This past week it's been -28 oC in the morning and snow flurries in the forecast.  It's been a long, long winter with record low temps and snow amounts. However there are spring shadows shaping up when the sun does make an appearance and that's been putting me in the mood to make some spring dresses.

A dress pattern that appeared in Sew Beautiful magazine issue #80 way back in 2002 has been on my bucket list for, well, I guess the past 12 years. I like the bateau style neck, the non-puffy sleeves and the raised waistline. The dress is called Pascale and was designed by Laura Jenkins Thompson.

Since there's no time like the present, I found some mauve micro-check cotton in my stash and finally, at long last, made a Pascale dress.

The dress came together beautifully and easily.
Instead of white piping, I went with a greeny-yellow colour and made self covered buttons too.
There wasn't enough fabric to make a wide sash so the thin one will just have to do.

I made a decorative hairband too to go with the dress; grosgrain ribbon with a purple pansy.

I am more than pleased with the outcome of the dress as it fits well and it was so easy to make.

For the next two dresses, I used the "Tinny" pattern from Straightgrain.http://www.straight-grain.com

I have to say that whenever I hear or see the word 'Tinny' I think of our aluminum fishing boat we fondly call The Tinny.

For the first Tinny, I used Aneela Hoey fabric called Walk in the Woods and used the pleated skirt style from the pattern.
I made two belt loops to hold the red leather belt I bought her from Nordstrom.

When I initially made the dress, I felt the hem wasn't long enough and overall it might be a tight fit.
Before I put in the sleeves, we had a 'fitting'.

Good news .. it fit!

So I put in the sleeves that I made a little longer than indicated on the pattern but simply created a thin rolled hem.

For a hairband decoration, I made a little fox face in felt and stitched it onto some grosgrain ribbon.

For the second Tinny dress, I used the circle skirt that's included in the pattern.

The collar was inspiration from the dress Rachel made made from the Belgian book Stof-voor-durf-het-zelvers.

In discussion with Rachel, she suggested using Oliver + S pattern Playdate dress, and using the bib section, play with it by folding into pleats.  So in other words, the collar flap piece was a deep U-shape and folded into pleats.
I cut mine out smaller than hers with fewer pleats and tried it on before adding the sleeves.

It fit and looked okay!!

I put in the sleeves but was annoyed at myself for not adding some length to the hem.  Using a 3mm rolled hem foot on my machine, I made the hem.

I didn't make matching decorative hairband much to Miss C's chagrin.

Duly noted and I'll get on that right away!