My daughter finally reached that stage a few months back where she wants control of her wardrobe. For her that means only dresses. No pants, shorts, rompers or even skirts if she has anything to do with it. Only dresses. I am trying to be cool about it all. But pretty much that means that she won't wear anything that I have ever made for her. So in a stash busting escapade I made her up four quick knit dresses inspired by
thief and bandit.
I can't remember where I got the first fabric, but it's a 4 way stretch knit that seems to have to some rayon in it. It's probably my favorite of the 4 just because it's more classic. The second one is made up in some fabric from
Art Gallery's Arizona line by April Rhodes. I really liked working with this knit. It is sturdier and has better recovery than the others.
I love that these dresses took about an hour to make, were mostly made up on my serger, and are comfy enough that she can wear them to the park. She has pretty much just been rotating these dresses every four days.
The top two were both sewn up in some cheap knits from
fabric.com. The fabric is not the nicest and is already pilling, but the pattern is busy enough that it's hard to notice. The left one has some pretty unfortunate pattern placement on the bodice that I still need to remedy with a pocket on one side or something. Oops.
For the pattern I just used an h & m dress that we had, but I think that the
soleil dress from
selvage designs is a pretty perfect match if you wanted to make your own. To keep it simple and quick I didn't bind the edges or anything, I just turned them under a 1/4" and topstitched with my double needle. Since I knew these would mostly be park dresses I didn't worry about making them perfect. I also doubled the fabric for the front bodice pieces for each dress for a little extra coverage since some of the fabric was pretty thin.
So that's it. Sometimes it's nice to sew up some easy and practical clothes that I know will get tons of wear.
