Third Time's a Charm

I know that I've only blogged about this dress once before, but truth be told, this is actually the third time that I’ve made the Anywhere Dress.

version numero uno

The first time I tried to be fancy-schmancy and make the facing from a different color fabric to give the dress a fun little twist.  And it would have worked brilliantly…if I didn’t make the facing from a darker fabric than the dress fabric, resulting in a dress where the facing can totally be seen through the dress.  Ooops!  Fortunately, O loves the style of this dress and still pulls this first version out to wear every once in a while.

The second version was this one and it fit perfectly when I first made it.  But then it shrunk with each progressive washing (despite the fact that I’m 97.3% sure that I prewashed the fabric) and now it’s inappropriately short and O always tries to argue with me when I tell her that she’s not going out without putting pants on under the dress. 

And now for the third version - this time with elbow-length sleeves and another bound neckline.  The fabric is the one fabric from my recent Girl Charlee order that I wasn’t quite in love with.  I don’t know what the correct term is but in addition to the printed pattern it feels like there’s some sort of fabric paint on the fabric to add some extra texture.  I don’t think it’s a good look on adult clothing but it seems to work just fine on kid’s clothes.  Fortunately O does not seem to be a picky consumer when it comes to all versions of this dress.  And fortunately she doesn’t seem to have noticed that I cut the seashells out upside down on the main part of the dress.  Oops!  I was careful to make this version a little longer in case there are any problems with shrinkage again but I think I ended up overestimating how long it needs to be because I ended up having to make quite a deep hem on this dress.  I’m going with the theory, though, that your hems can never be too deep when you’re dealing with children who are growing like little weeds (and I should know how weeds grow considering that our front lawn is now approximately 50% weeds).

And one more moment of confession - I'm 99% sure that I sewed the bound neckline on backwards and now the back is the front and vice versa.  Yes, I could have brought out my frenemy (the seam ripper) and redone it, but I kind of love the higher neckline in the front.  It gives the dress a little bit of a 1960's feel and you actually can't tell that it's backwards.  I promise.

Once again, O is feeling some mad-love for this dress.  She even begged to wear it around the house before the dress was fully hemmed (which I let her do once she’d been fully warned that I would NOT be happy if she stained it with strawberries before I had even finished sewing it).  Personally, I’m just happy that she now has a dress that is cute, super-comfy, and playground appropriate, because if it were up to her she would probably choose to wear floor-length gowns to the playground every day and those are, well, a little less playground appropriate. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was given this pattern by Go To Patterns and this post contains affiliate links, but, as always, all opinions are my own.