My lovely friend Charlotte has had a lovely little lady baby down under- Florence.
I thought I’d make Florence a little dress, as she looks like a lady.
I got the dress pattern free from the amazing Made by Rae, link here
http://www.made-by-rae.com/2013/01/free-little-geranium-dress-pattern/
As Flo will be in Australia for a wee while, I wanted something to remind her of her English heritage and on another blog I saw a very cute idea. This was a little dress with a rain cloud bodice and a raindrop skirt. However…
I CANNOT REMEMBER WHICH BLOG THIS WAS.
If anyone spots this blog, please send me the details as the last thing I want is for the blogger to see my post, develop an intense rage at my plagiarism, run around cursing my blog (already has a curse word in the title so at least I’ve helped out there) and leave me a bad comment.
So thank you mystery blog for this lovely idea.
I got the raindrop fabric from the trusty http://fabricrehab.co.uk/ and the grey linen was left over from my camera cushion cover, but I bet you already spotted that, clever readers.
The pattern from Made by Rae was so simple to follow and the instructions were clear and helped along by pictures too. You should probably have a go yourself, right now.
The only different techniques I used was in pressing the seams, Instead of an iron I used my hair straighteners to press my seams.
I added the cloud with machine applique. Normally I would have used a zig zag stitch with a wide stitch width but with a very short stitch length for a sturdy hold. However my wee purple dream machine doesn’t have these capabilities, so I just zig zag-ed around my design and we can only hope it holds.
I then added a hand embroidered sun using back-stitch to fill the design. At this stage I wish I had used a stiffener or interfacing on the back of the design. Not doing this means there’s a slight pucker where I worked the fabric whilst embroidering. For this I am very sorry Florence, but I doubt you’ll notice as I’m fairly sure you can’t even focus yet, let alone offer criticism.
I also added an embroidered detail on the side seams to cover where the bodice sections meet.
I used poppers on the back as previously mentioned, I find button holes a complete shag to do and this is another function my diddy sewing machine doesn’t have. I’m sure I will write a post soon, where I have well and truly conquered button holes. If this doesn’t materialize please nag me as it really is something I need to get my head round
Here’s the dress all finished.
Fuck Off Bunting. 