My Little Princess

My little girl is all GIRL!  She loves to wear dresses!  In fact, everyday when it's time to get dressed, she states that she needs to wear a dress or a skirt so she can dance.  Having a girl is definitely different than having boys!

So for Halloween, all my boys get their costumes out of our costume box.  Unfortunately, there aren't any little girl costumes.  So I had to change that!

For this little dress, I used everything to make it from what I had here at home:

For the skirt part (underneath the ruffles) I used an old slip that I had.

For all the ruffles and teal part of the bodice, I used some material I picked up at a yard sale about a year ago for 25 cents!  I can't ever pass up on cheap fabric.

I used some satin ribbon for the trim on the bodice.

I used some white fabric I had for the bodice as well.
A zipper that I had stashed away.

I started off by getting one of her old shirts and cut out my white fabric.  For the front part of the bodice, I folded the shirt in half and the white fabric in half and then cut on the fold.

I repeated the step above for the teal part.

For the back part, I used the same shirt and cut out two pieces of fabric. I did a baste stitch to hold the two pieces together.

I wanted a little gather in the front, so I cut a piece of fabric and gathered both edges and then sewed it onto the shimmery part of the bodice.

Then I did a basting stitch to hold these two pieces together.

After that, I stopped taking pictures.  Sorry.  I didn't realize it until after I was done.  That's what I get for multitasking too many projects at once!  :)

But I sewed three pieces of ribbon onto the gathered part of the bodice to secure it and hide my stitching.  I also made little flowers out of the ribbon with pearl beads in the center and sewed it onto the top of the bodice.

I made little sleeves from cutting the outline of the same shirt from above.  Then I pieced everything together. 

For the ruffles, I cut strips of fabric 10 inches wides and about 50 inches long.  I folded them in half length wise, and sewed them and then gathered them.  And then I sewed all the gathers to the skirt.

I attached the bodice to the skirt and added the zipper.  I wished that I took pictures of all the steps, I will have to remember that next time!

It was kind of cold out, so she wore a long sleeve shirt underneath the dress.

What a beautiful little princess that twirled all night long and loved the candy she got in return!

I entered this dress in the So you Think You Can Sew Competition.  And I made it into the top 12!  This is huge!  There were 127 entries and some amazing talent!

Starting January 2012, I will be competing in the contest!  Wish me luck! ~Briana