Wednesday, October 10, 2012

KCWC: Leila & Ben's Sweet Dress

Afternoon!  My KCWC counter is up to 1:55:37.0, which means that I 'steal' more sewing time during the day than I had realised.  Perhaps I should keep the timer up, to make sure my "I'll just be 5 minutes boys" sewing sessions don't routinely turn out to be 25 minutes like this morning's one.  Anyway, enough of the guilt trip, here's what I have to show:



Here's the details:

Pattern:  Leila & Ben's Sweet Little Dress 
Size:      12 months

Modifications:  
I was inspired by this dress, and gathered the neckline and sleeves onto a knit band rather than using elastic in a casing.  I cut the bands the same length as the elastic specified in the pattern, and made them 4cm wide.  The top is also shorter than the pattern (more tunic rather than dress length), based on the length of the brown top I started with.


Materials:  
All from the 'For repair or remodelling' box in my cupboard!  The front and back are from an old top of mine, but as the sleeves on it were too narrow I used fabric from another top for the sleeves, and part of a third for the band (my original top also had blue sleeves and a white band around the neckline).

Lessons/Comments:  
Peasant dresses/tops are super quick and easy (I nearly doubled the time involved by using the neck and sleeve bands), and I'll definitely be making more.  


I finished this dress before trying it on the young one, and found that the neckline was way too big for her.  So my dilemma now is - do I pull the neckband off and make it smaller, or wait until next year for her to wear it (this neck and armholes are similar to some size 2 tops I have).  I love it as it is, so I think I'll put it away for now, but the lesson is definitely to try things as you go if you're going to modify patterns (and also be suspicious and check if a pattern tells you to cut the same length of elastic for a 1 year old's dress as a 5 year old's!).

1 comment:

  1. Yep. I know that 5 Minute Guilt. Bet you had a spring in your step afterwards though. You probably even baked brownies.

    ReplyDelete

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