Skill Level - Confident Beginner
Fabric - cotton/spandex from l'oiseau fabrics
Skills - colour blocking, stripe matching
My friend's granddaughter is a voracious reader (actually "listener"!) and has an amazing imagination - you never know who she actually is from day to day. Her mother told me that she's enjoying the series about Rosie Revere the Engineer and asked if I could make her a Rosie dress for her upcoming birthday.
As I was not familiar with that reading series, her mother sent me a picture and right away I could see that Love Notions' Prisma would be absolutely perfect! And since mother was taking care of the head scarf, all I needed was white, black and red knit fabric.
Rosie's dress is very plain with black trim at the neck and sleeves but with alternate black and red stripes at the bottom of the dress. Now that part would need planning!
I decided on 1" stripes joined with .25" seams so each stripe would be 1.5" wide. The bottom black stripe would be 2" wide to account for the hem. And then I would have to add 1.5" to the body above the stripes to account for the loss that the seams cause. I taped the pattern pieces to my cutting mat and drew lines for the stripes, then cut for the addition to the body. I was careful to write the colour on each stripe.
I also marked the stripes with numbers and F and B for front and back. The Prisma version I was sewing is the A-line view, so all of the stripes would be different lengths and the outsides would have a slight slant to them. I also made the hem straight instead of the slight curve to simplify things.
Then I placed all the pattern pieces with their fabrics.
Time to cut everything out. The stripes were easy to cut - one at a time, starting with the largest and using the straight side of the previous cut for the next one.
Once everything was cut out, I placed all the pieces in their respective task.
I started with the stripes, going from bottom up and now you can see why numbers were important! I serged the stripes together with a .25" seam. And as I serged on each stripe, I steam pressed the seam down.
It's easy to get confused when sewing the stripes together (ask me how I know!) so here's a tip. You are sewing the long side of the shorter strip to the short side of the longer strip. When you do that, you should see a triangle of the stripe on the under side.
With all the stripes serged together, then they were serged to the body. Now it was time to assemble the dress.
Front sewn to back and sleeves in place, the side seam needs to be sewn. This is the tricky part! I carefully pinned front to back and then with a longer stitch, sewed the striped section together with my sewing machine to make sure the stripes stayed put.
I did the rest of the assembly with my serger, but when I got to the striped section, I made sure the serging line was just outside of the straight stitching line.
A steam press and we're ready for the final bits - neckband, bands for the ends of the short sleeves and hemming.
I'm pretty pleased with how well it turned out and I hope "Rosie" likes it too! Since it's a birthday present, I don't have a modelled photo, but if I get one, I'll update this post.
One final touch - a label which I purchased from Love Notions - which seemed totally appropriate!
If you don't already have this wonderful pattern for girls, you can get it from my affiliate link below.
you did a wonderful job little girl will love that so much
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
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