The stella dress

This is a knockoff of a dress that I saw on the Stella McCartney Kids site.  It is basically the sundress I have made loads of times, but with the front having lots of gathered pieces.  I did a few things differently, but made the front piece basically the same.  The Girl would never go for such muted colors.  It had to be big and bright.  It also had to be much twirlier.

Inspiration dress from Stella Kids  – click on the picture to go to the site (retails for $76 – I made it for less than $10):

Construction of this dress went as follows:

• First I cut the middle pieces to be about 6 inches wide.  I rounded the tops of the two pieces and then cut the bottom to be one continuous curved piece.
• I ran the middle seam through the serger to ruffle it, but didn’t ruffle overly much.  I pulled the threads until it had a nice ruffle, then I ran a straight stitch over the top of it to keep it in place.  Unfortunately, with the gathering it made the bottom pucker up a bit so it doesn’t look quite like the inspiration dress.  Still cute, though.
• I ruffled the sides on the serger, then ironed everything down nice and flat.
• Cut a piece of fabric on the bias that was long enough to go around the sides and top.
• Attached the bias strip to the top.  I used the fabric cut on the bias with purchased bias tape that you can cover yourself.
• Ruffled a piece of fabric to go along the top on both sides
• Attached the top pieces together, making sure to get as close to the bias piece as possible.
• Once this piece was together, I place it on my lining fabric and cut it out to match the size.
• Braided three pieces of fabric cut on the bias for the straps.  First I sewed the three pieces together, one over the other, and then started braiding.
• Put the straps in between the front and the lining piece and sewed up the top seam.
• The rest of the construction can be found in my tutorial for the shirred sundress.  I did cut the front skirt down a bit in front before I ruffled to accommodate the curved dip.

There were some definite flaws in the making of this dress, but they are mostly hidden inside.  Next time I’ll have a better idea of how to do everything.  Where I connected the lining on the sides it was hard to get it to look pretty with the bias binding on the other side.  Then when I serged the skirt and bodice, some of the lining got caught in it, so there is a nice hole in the lining on the inside.  At that point in the construction…I just wasn’t going to redo it.  I do need to move the straps in a bit though.  They are too far apart on the front.  That’s going to be fun.

The Girl had her “top banana” at school today and she chose this to wear on the day they did her presentation.  Basically, they just show some pictures from home and get to talk about themselves a bit.  Most of the pictures Anya chose to show were of big brother!