Scalloped Princess Dress: Ariel's Day Out

I'm so excited to show off B's latest dress!  I'm participating in Lydia's first blog tour at Little Kiwis Closet.  For this tour the contributors are all sewing up their version of the Scalloped Princess Dress.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's creations.  These are all super talented women and I'm so honored to be showcased among them.  Also check out the link at the end of the post for a fantastic giveaway opportunity!

This pattern is the perfect canvas to be creative and create any princess dress.  It has great options for bodice necklines and hemlines so it is easy to find the combination that you want.  The instructions are clear and the pieces sew together easily and beautifully.  The dress is a lovely fit for B.  I followed the sizing of the chest rather than the age.  (B usually wears size 4 but her chest measurement indicated that she should be in a size 3.)      

The main difficulty I had was my own fault.  I decided to get direction from my customer.  Bad idea.  My customer is fairly exacting and terms like "inspired by" don't go over well.  Mostly because she doesn't understand them or the point of having an "inspired by" dress.  Consequently, I had to figure out how to add long sleeves and my very first cuffs.  My initial thought was to draft sleeves but then I got too scared because the rest of the dress was too cute to ruin.  I ended up modifying sleeves from another pattern.  The bonus was that it came with instructions on how to attach cuffs.  

Check out my beautiful sleeves!

The other difficult part for me was that for the black part of the dress was a thick cotton.  It made it more difficult to top stitch the princess V bodice hem to the skirt.  If I had followed the recommendation to sew in a gathering stitch I would not have had to rip out my stitches so many times.  Good thing the fabric was so thick it could handle that kind of abuse.

If not for the issues I self generated, the dress would have been super quick to sew up. As it was it only took a few evenings. One of my favorite parts is the back of the dress. Look how sweet that scoop back is! It's so darling for the little princess in your life.

 As soon as I put this dress on her she would not take it off.  She insisted on wearing it to dinner and got marinara sauce on the cuff.  Such is the life of a princess dress!

Admit it, if you had a twirly dress, you would twirl too!

I can't leave the post without an adorable baby photo. So here's baby C with more food on her hands and face than in her belly.  I could just nibble on those sticky cheeks all day.

Where's my princess dress?

Be sure to check out Shelly's dress at Sew Shelly Sew and don't forget the giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway