Blue Check Dress : Project run and play

I was invited over at Project Run and Play to write a guest post with tutorial. I am now bring home the post.

Hi, I an Zoeope from Zoeeden Designs. I am a working mother with three children and I lovee!! making dresses for my girls mostly. I'm just so happy when they outgrow their dresses, more excuse to make more. :) Thank you so much for inviting me over Project Run and Play.  I have been blessed by this website with all the tutorials and designs posted and I am so happy to be able to 'give' back.

I play with the basic bodice pattern a lot. I use it for pretty much everything. I just alter and use it. Used it for Dresses, Jackets, A-line dresses, different neck designs etc.
I get my dress designs mostly on-line as I don't go shopping for clothes (ha ha ). One place is Pinterest, I have my own collection there now. I came across this dress one day and thought it will make a nice design for a little lady. :) So I made mine. Will show you how to alter the front bodice to get this design.

Inspiration Picture from Pinterest

Tutorial for making front bodice piece.

This was made for a three year old.

Front Bodice with grainline

Take your front bodice pattern, mark out the 'fold' and 'grainline' (this helps you position your pattern piece on the straight grain of the fabric for cutting)

Take a ruler and draw out a slant line.  Notice that the ruler is not at the tip of the fold line, if you do this, the centre piece will form a "v" which is not what I wanted.

The slant line is the pink line which is then cut.

Add your seam allowance to the two pattern pieces. 

Pieces all cut out.

Skirt here was for second dress.

Side front pinned to centre piece

Pin the two side front to the centre front piece, sew.

Front Bodice ready

This is your new front piece. Take a look at the picture and you will notice that the black (centre piece) extends down a bit at the bottom and up a bit at the shoulders. Trim. 

Note: this trimming did not affect the size of my top bodice but if you feel it might then add about 0.5" to the length of the pattern from the beginning.

Variation
The centre piece could be made into horizontal pleats for added texture/effect.
Simply get a piece of fabric three times the length of pattern piece and 1" wider than its width.
e.g bodice was 9.5" long and 9" at width. Fabric used will be 30" long and 10" wide.
Make the pleats (1" wide), Iron in place, then place pattern on top and cut.
Jess from craftiness is not optional has a similar tutorial on her site.

Skirt: Long rectangle pleated at the sides.

My shirt piece was just a long rectangle 76" long. ( I like me a full skirt !!) which is then pleated at the two sides. To get this, fold your long rectangle skirt into two. At the centre I measured 6" (inches) then did the pleats after that on the two sides leaving another 3" after that to have the same look at the back.

I then join the front bodice to the back bodice (back bodice not altered) at shoulder and sides.

Join the bodice to the skirt

Add the zip at the back.

Will not go into too much construction details, which can be found on-line.

She will not standstill for a picture, decided to use my dummy.

Extras

I always make the same thing for my girls. This time around however I wanted to try out a different design so came up with this second dress.

Thank you so much for having me, hope to visit again.

To all the wonderful ladies (and men) out there, keep designing and  God bless you. :)

Thank you Project run and play!!!

Guest Post: Project Run and Play

Join me at  Project Run and Play and read about this dresses plus a little tutorial.

Has it happened to you before where you think about and look at a dress too much it gets to at a point you can't say if its nice or not. Yes, it happened to this dress, now I can't really say if its nice, quacky, school girlie, or just boring!!!

Anyways all at Project run and play.

Have a nice day.

Regards.

Girls Tutu Skirt

Since summer is official here, guess it is time to start to showcase summer.
This season is the easiest to make clothes for. You can get away with not lining dresses. I can't believe how many elastic waist skirts, and maxi dresses I have made already.

I made a pink tutu skirt for the girls because I know how much they like to dress like princesses.

Used this no sew treasures for tots tutu tutorial and was I glad I didn't have to sew it.. yes!!  Strange cos I thought I loved sewing. (Guess it was on project that couldn't go wrong if no sewing is involved)

Made the heart using diamanté iron on.

I took a plain pink t shirt and applied some diamanté iron on. Made a 'star' on one shirt and 'heart' on the other to add some 'shine'

Anyway I bought this 6" tulle roll of 100 yards and used pretty much everything for the two tulles. Using the tutorial above (which was pretty easy and straight forward) I made mine with a finished length of 13". If making this tulle skirt my advice is that add a few more inches to the length you use as the tulle tends to compress itself and look shorter than it actually is.

Thanks to summer I have two happy tutu princesses.

Thanks for stopping by.

Regards.

Pattern Testing the Tumble Tee

This post is about pattern testing for Imagine gnats. A lovely lady I am just getting to know through blog land.

She also has an Etsy shop among other things where she sells patterns and other sewing related things.

This pattern is known as the 'tumble tee' pattern, which will be up for sale soon. The pattern is actually colour blocked but I went for the option without colour blocking because I didn't have complimentary colours knit at home.

All important back view :)

I just love how easy putting the pattern pieces together was, I only had to cut two pieces for this dress and everything came together pretty quickly. Now who wouldn't like that.

I used a red velvet stretch fabric, and this dress (both fabric and design) is actually nicer in real life than in this pictures.

Details: Belt loop and buttons

Decided to spice up the red velvet with a touch of rainbow satin belt and some colour buttons.
For the neckline and armhole I just turned in 1/4" and hemmed it down with a single needle. The bottom of the dress was not hemmed (hurray to no fray).
I like my dresses a little longer because of the rate the girls shoot up, so I added an extra inch (1") to the overall length of the dress, because of this I put in a slit end of the dress for better movement. It was an instant hit with the girls. The other girl was asking for her dress and I told her it will be ready soon.

Thankfully it will be whipped up before I know it. :)

Even though this looks simple I can think of a lot of ways to reuse this pattern, with different fabrics and get nice results.

Just to give a feel of the dress without a belt. The belt could also be turned and tied at the back instead of the front

Try to get her to stay still for a picture, was too excited earlier on.

Will take pictures for a little tutorial of the making of belt loops when making the second one.

Thanks for coming around.

Regards.