Little lacy miracle dress

One of the books I ordered from Germany is this one:

Like the title says, it features 25 cute dresses. I love most of them, and had a hard time deciding which one to make first (darling Esther gave me one more week with the sewing machine!).

After some back and forth I settled on the title dress, mainly because I kind of understood the description on how to do it - apart from something called 'notching and mitering the corners' (?):

Then I went to the fabric shop.

It took me longer to decide on a fabric than to make the dress.

They didn't have the pretty lace from the picture.

What they did have were hundreds of rolls of fabric, all colors, all patterns, heavy ones and light ones, glittery ones and checked ones.
I was completely overwhelmed, especially because I had no clue as to which fabric would work for a dress like this.


Finally I settled on a brownish one and some equally brownish lace, and my faithful companion and I set to work:

The book doesn't have patterns (one of the reasons I bought it :-) ), but gives you little drawings with measurements
which I more or less managed to duplicate on the fabric.

These dresses are made for Japanese people, meaning they are rather on the small side:

Then I cut the parts. It is a kimono cut, where the arms are cut as part of the body.
I cut one piece for the back, two front pieces and a panel for the front to put between the pieces:

The most difficult part of the dress came right at the beginning. They call it: Attach bias-strip edging to back neckline.
I fumbled my way through it:

Then you have to attach the lace to the front panel, easy peasy that one:

Then sew the front panel to the two front sides:

Next up is closing the shoulder seams, attaching lace to the end of the arms, and sewing the front and back parts of the dress together:

I actually made the whole thing without having to use the seam ripper!
This is a first and very exciting :-).

When I was finished I was so fond of the dress that I even ironed it (another first).


My photographer has a birthday coming up and is busy planning an elaborate party.
This envolves VERY long telephone conversations with her best friend.

So she couldn't really be bothered with taking pictures.
She quickly snapped two and run off again:

 

And now I am actually looking forward to making the next dress!

Lots of love to you,

Tweet