Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

I have a few more projects to finish from November. Oh, is it December? Oops. I still have a skirt for me, a dress for Emma and a shirt muslin for me to finish…in November. Oh well. Luckily they are all winter appropriate.

Anyhoo, I got it into my head that I wanted to make the daughter a dress..for Christmas. So a bit of a fancy dress, but maybe not too fancy. I looked at the patterns and saw this Project Runway thing, anyway Simplicity 2828.

I know what you are thinking, it’s kind of blah. Kind of boring. Well, I never trust the pretty pictures, those will get you into trouble, so true to form, I looked at the line drawing and pretty much liked what I saw.

I really liked these, there was the sleeveless component which Emma loves, a nice puffy skirt, a pretty sash. Lovely. and simple. I had the perfect fabric even. last fall, I found this lovely brown velvet with a beautiful border design on it. I had meant to make Emma a dress from it last year, and I would make a matching skirt, but it just never happened. Well, little miss opinionated didn’t like the brown, so I rooted through my stash and managed to find enough of a pink patterned poly fabric, and the leftover last piece of the horrible cotton Lycra (good riddance) that I used on her renaissance dress (I know, it’s coming) and the ivory faille I was going to use for the sash originally. She also liked the look of the ruffly sleeves (argh) and the bow on the front (whatever).

This is why I don’t sketch.

This was my sketch using all the help in the world. Looks awful. Emma was pretty skeptical, but she liked all the fabric so that was okay. So the bright yellow is meant to be the ivory faille. I was originally going to add lace around the neckline, but I found some pink trim(s) and will use that instead. Also, I wasn’t sure I was going to have enough of the pink patterned fabric for the bodice, but I did. A pretty bad sketch, all in all. I usually just have an idea in my head, then make up the project. Of course, that doesn’t help you to visualize my project does it? Well, I think this horrible sketch is pretty bad, and you are probably thinking, “what little girl would want that hot mess?” Indeed.

I did all the cutting out this past weekend. I started sewing it last night. Actually I did the stay stitching of the bodice and one ruffle baby hem. I only had 30 minutes!

Then just tonight, I flatlined the organza to the skirt panels…

I finished the other ruffle hem, gathered them and sewed them to the bodice…

You can see here the faille is really a nice color, not bright yellow! So that’s s far as I have gotten. of course, I made some design changes to the pattern. I decided not to pleat the skirt panels, but wanted to gather them. I just didn’t like the look of those crisp pleats, I figured with the soft pinks and ivory a soft, gathered line would look better. It’s in my sketch!

Since I honly had a scant yard of the faille, I was only able to cut out the sash body and the two ruffles. I decided to purchase some wide, ivory satin ribbon and I also picked up some nice hem tape.

You can see the ribbon is a prefect match for the faille. I probably won’t show much more construction. I’ll add a snap or two of the zipper. I’ll be putting an invisible zipper in, and I’ll have to add it to two gathered sections, so it should be fun. I’ll post those, but I hope to have this done this weekend. I decided to go ahead and make the brown velvet skirt. It is an OOP Vogue pattern. More on that later.

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