Dress For Emma

After facebooking about my adventures in sewing, a friend of mine offered her daughter as a guinea pig, muahaha. Here is the result.

This dress was made using a cotton fabric I got from the thrift store. It is a reddish color with small white dots. The trim is a ribbon with a modern floral motif.
The pattern (also from the thrift store) is for a dress and short jacket. The jacket has puff sleeves, is fully lined, and has one button at the neck. The dress has a square neck, straps, a dirndl skirt with patch pockets, and a bow at the back. This is Simplicity 8029 from, I think, the 1990s.
I give my execution of the jacket an A- and of the dress a B- ; minus big points for the skirt being attached to the bodice crooked- you can see the pockets are uneven in the fence photos (after the jump). How did I miss that :( I am also subtracting points for choosing a ribbon trim instead of the recommended flat lace trim. The ribbon was much harder to sew into the seams.
I added a bow to the outfit (in hair); I intend to post these bow instructions (from a different pattern) because hello, cute.
I like this dress for a girl child as it is machine washable, not too short to play in, and appropriate for many occasions. The styling is classic and the dress could be worn with leggings and a long sleever in the cooler months. I would make this dress again. The only adjustment I can think of is to cut four of the bow straps, for double sided straps when using similar fabric (this fabric is printed on one side and lame on the other). I took a bit off the length but the dirndl skirt is made of rectangular pattern pieces anyway. I had to guess at the strap length due to my model being 500 miles away. The straps would be easy to lengthen if it wasn't for the damn ribbon. (They could still be lengthened another inch if necessary.)
So in sum: love the jacket, so glad Emma and her mom like the outfit, and I look forward to making more silly things ;)
See more pics after the jump.

My Janet Weiss Dress

My Janet Weiss costume posts are my most popular blog posts. All five posts are listed below.

1. Janet Weiss Makeup & Hair
2. Janet Weiss Accessories
3. Janet Weiss Lingerie
4. Janet Weiss's Pink Dress
5. My Janet Weiss Dress (THIS POST)

Here is my homemade Janet Weiss Dress. I would not rate this an "A" but I think I did an alright job for a costume. I used a dress pattern I already had with the following modifications.
Changed the sleeve to be less puffy. This was a bad idea.
Added collar and cuffs.
Changed the skirt from straight to A-line.
Added a bib front with trim and buttons using the front bodice pattern piece cut down.
And of course made the belt using a metal thrift store buckle I painted white, and white cotton strap covered with the gingham fabric using the selvage method.
I also made the slip which I have not photographed yet. I already had the bag, shoes and cardigan.
For the hair I used hot rollers and x-ed bobby pins for the front.
All in all I spent about a month on this dress and I sure I hope I learned something about making dresses!

Janet Weiss's Pink Dress

My Janet Weiss costume posts are my most popular blog posts. All five posts are listed below.

1. Janet Weiss Makeup & Hair
2. Janet Weiss Accessories
3. Janet Weiss Lingerie
4. Janet Weiss's Pink Dress (THIS POST)
5. My Janet Weiss Dress

Janet is wearing a pink dress with a peter-pan collar and cuffs in matching pink/white gingham, a bib front with white trim and non-functional buttons, long sleeves, and an A-line silhouette, with gingham belt.
The shade of pink is somewhere from baby pink to carnation pink. Use cotton or any basic smooth woven fabric. The gingham is of a medium size not currently readily available.
The white trim is hard to see but I used a type of venise lace. Jumbo rick-rack will also look pretty close.
The white buttons are round in shape but with an embossed flower pattern. You can get flower buttons but mostly in smaller sizes. There are six buttons on the bodice and one must assume one button on each cuff.
The belt has a round slider buckle that is not shiny. Find a round buckle used or make a fabric covered buckle. Take the prong out of a regular prong buckle to convert it to a slider. Match your belting size to your buckle. Use cotton belting and wrap as normal if you can't finding plastic belting. Belt instructions are in the Reader's Digest sewing book. The belt has a snap to hold down the tail.
The dress shape is fitted, with sport (non-puffed) sleeves, and an A-line skirt that falls from the natural waist. The length is at or just above the knee and has a deep hem. (The collage caption saying it is well above the knee is wrong - I am an idiot, her arms are raised and it is riding up.) The zip back goes from the neck to below the waist as normal.
The bib front falls from the shoulder to the waistline sloping toward center at the waist, with the trim sandwiched between the bib and the bodice. Attach the trim and bib before bust darts are sewn.
The peter pan collar is quite wide, you can see it goes a fair way to the shoulder. It is a two piece collar as the dress zips up the back. The collar pieces neither meet at the front nor the back. It is rounded in the front in the Peter Pan or "Claudine" style but squared at the back.
The cuff can be made using a rectangular cuff with a simple edge-trimmed slit (or make a men's style cuff if you want). Instructions for the slit and cuff are available in the sewing book.
A straight skirt pattern can be modified to an A-line shape with relatively little effort.
I have illustrated the pattern to give you an idea of it's design. I have also made a collage of screen grabs.

Materials needed for this project

• Plain-weave in Pink - yardage enough for a dress
• Pink/White Gingham - yardage enough for a belt with tail
• Eight white buttons of about 1/2"
• White venise lace trim - about 1.5 yards or two times your shoulder to waist measurement
• White dress zipper
• Belting
• White circular belt buckle
• One large snap
• Lightweight interfacing

Pattern pieces for Pink fabric

• Bodice front cut on the fold
• Bib overlay cut on the fold
• Bodice back
• Sleeve
• Skirt front cut on fold
• Skirt back
• Short piece of bias strip for cuff opening
• Front neck facing (with interfacing)
• Back neck facing (with interfacing)

Pattern Pieces for Gingham Fabric

• Collar (with interfacing)
• Cuff rectangles (with interfacing)
• Belt

I hope dress makers will see from this list that it's pretty straightforward in terms of parts and subsequently construction. Best of luck to all you little sluts.

illustration