Striking Gold

Sewing has definitely taken a backseat lately to school work, family obligations, and basically just keeping my children alive and fed.  Despite the craziness around here though, I did manage to dust off my sewing machine (in the most literal sense) in order to sew up a dress for each girl for some family pictures that we had taken last weekend.

For O's dress I was definitely inspired by this simple quilting cotton that I bought over the summer during my Portland fabric-shopping extravaganza.  It's a cream and gold quilting cotton and as soon as I saw it, I knew that the girls would love it.  It turns out that I was right.  My only regret is not buying a tad bit more.  I was hoping to be able to make something for C out of it too, but because I cut out the bodice on the bias it used up more fabric than I had planned for.

And speaking of the bias-cut top, that was my other inspiration for the dress.  I really wanted to make a Hanami with a chevron on the front.  Yeah, yeah, I've made a million Hanami's before but I thought that this would be a great modification to the pattern.  Super simple and really cute.  I also played around with the stripes by making the back of the bodice vertical and the skirt horizontal.  It also eliminated any problems that I may have had trying to match up a chevron on the back while inserting a zipper.  I'm all about taking the path of least resistance.

O's a huge fan of her new dress and was made an even bigger fan when we went out to buy her some gold shoes to complete the outfit.  And I'm a big fan of the fact that I already have her holiday dress made.  Big high five for both of us!