Bubble, Bubble

Toil and Trouble.  Some days, that's exactly what staying at home with a three year old feels like. 

 
This is the first year that my daughter is old enough to be excited about Halloween and wearing a costume.  About a month ago we started asking her what she wanted to be for Halloween, and each time it was a different answer:  Cinderella.  A cat.  Queen Elsa.  The only rule was that once I bought the fabric, she could not change her mind.  So when she finally gave the same answer for an entire week, "a witch", we finally went ahead with the costume.

I have to say, I am really, REALLY proud that I completed this project a full three weeks before Halloween, and not at 1 a.m. the night before (or, more realistically, at 3 in the afternoon before Trick or Treating).

 For the pattern I used the Chole Dress pattern from Violette Field Threads.  I used the same pattern in August to make a flower girl dress, and decided that I was going to be brave (crazy?) enough to try it again for a witch's outfit.  And fortunately for my sanity, it was sooo much easier this time around.  The pattern calls for three layers in the skirt:  a layer of chiffon, a layer of netting, and a layer of tulle.  After struggling with the chiffon in the flower girl dress, I decided not to use it for this dress.  I didn't think the chiffon added much to the shape or the look of the skirt (at least for the tea length version), and so it didn't seem worth it to mess with it this time.  So for the three layers I used netting, tulle, and then a Halloween mesh fabric from Joann's for the top layer. 

Two quick notes about this pattern:  First, the picture on the patten cover shows a much, much fuller skirt on the tea length version.   After making it twice, I have never been able to achieve that look.  So I don't know if I'm missing something, or if there were extra layers beyond what the instructions call for that were added to those dresses.  Secondly, the pattern says that a lining is "optional", but both dresses required lining so as not to be really see-through.  So if anybody else has had any experience making this dress, I'd love to hear about it. 

Here's the back of the dress:

And voila, a perfect witch's dress for a three year old who likes to be fancy!

Flower Girl Dress

For the past week my life sewing has been occupied with creating this:   a flower girl dress for a seven month old baby girl.
 

 
I consider this dress my opus, my masterpiece.  Or something like that.  But seriously, this dress was a lot of fun to make, caused only a few tears (something to do with an almost-finished dress and a large hole cut into the bodice by my serger), and turned out beautifully. 

To make the dress, I used the Chloe Dress pattern by Violette Field Threads for the skirt.  Despite having a three year old daughter, I had never before worked with tulle or made anything this fluffy, so I thought having a pattern with detailed instructions would be helpful.    I love the look of Violette Field patterns, but they are not very practical for every day wear, so I was thrilled to have an excuse to by this one.    I'm already envisioning a black version with this fabric as a witch's dress for Halloween.

The skirt has seven yards of fabric in it.  Yes, you read that correctly:  seven yards.  Two yards of chiffon, two yards of netting, two yards of tulle, and a yard of lining.   The results are a perfectly poofy skirt.
 

Rather than using the pattern bodice, I instead did a shirred satin top with decorative straps.  The flowers were made with alternating strips of satin and tulle-- I love how they turned out!  I may do a tutorial for those at some point, although I know that there are quite a few of fabric flower tutorials out there already. 

I wish I had more pictures to share, but organization and time were not on my side this morning, and the dress has already been delivered.  This project was a lot of work, but the results were worth it!