Stash Project #1

My first stash project was making a birthday dress for Emmaline.*  Her birthday was a few weeks ago, but I just got around to taking pictures of it today.  I put a 2 in hem in the dress originally, only to find out that Miss Emma has grown in the last few months and 2 in was too short for her. So I had to rip out the old hem and put in a new one. Hence the lag.

Are you following Project Run and Play? You should. As the name implies, it's Project Runway for kids. They have a "sew along at home" section to the competition, which has the same theme each week as the main competition.  I keep meaning to participate in it, but my designs are never ready by Friday at 8am. The first week's challenge was to design a dress inspired by the Junebug dress designed by Jess. As fate would have it, I've known Jess since we were young. Her mom cut my hair growing up and we attended the same church. Pretty cool, huh? She's a cool cat, for sure.

After reading through the  Junebug  tutorial, I grabbed a lovely red cotton I've had for a long time and set to work. I used a Simplicity pattern to draft up the bodice size, sleeves and skirt, as I have yet to make a sloper for Miss Emmaline. Then I went to work redrafting those pieces to fit with the Junebug bodice. I wanted to have a longer sleeve, since it's winter (albeit a very mild one), and a knife pleated skirt, not a gathered one. 

And because I didn't have enough large buttons, I opted to do ten small ones. I spent forever making those button holes! I'm swearing off button holes for a long while.  For the sleeve, instead of a casing with 1/4" elastic, I used elastic thread and slightly ruched the sleeves. While Emmaline might complain that the sleeves don't go to her wrists, I think the 3/4 puffy sleeve is adorable.

I think the whole dress turned out pretty adorable, too. Yay for sticking to my goal and using stash fabric!

Stay tuned, I have two more dresses to post that I made using stash fabric, one of which is another take on the Junebug dress!

*Don't worry if you are confused, my daughter's name really isn't Emmaline. For the sake of anonymity, I've changed it to a name I love, but will never be able to use, because the Hubs vetoed it.