Look what I made!

Yesterday afternoon, I made a dress for Ellie. My first-ever dress! Sewn without a pattern! And it's CUTE! I know that's a lot of little sentence fragments and a lot of exclamation points, but I am more the slightly proud of my accomplishment (my only other sewing to date has been one pair of pajama pants and two library bags). Ellie sat beside me for almost the entire process (which tells you right there how quickly it goes), asking "Is it done now?" with every pause of the sewing machine. Ellie was very anxious to try it on, though she was less than eager to model it for the camera. After two dozen attempts, I finally got her to smile for this shot:


Ellie practically lived in her two jersey smocked sundresses from Petit Bateau last year. She wore them until the elastic smocking came loose in a few dozen places. How excited was I when I found simple instructions on Martha Stewart and a video tutorial! Heather Ross is the presenter. The patterns for the child and adult versions are available in her latest book Weekend Sewing (which I really want to own!), and they are also available online here and here. My first attempt was made with cheap fabric from Spotlight, the Wal-Mart of Aussie crafts and homewares. I wanted to make sure I could figure it out before moving on to good stuff. I used ribbon from my stash for the straps, and I love how it looks. The dress is super-easy and really cute! Now that I know how it works, I plan to buy some nicer fabrics and make two each for the girls and one or two adult versions for myself for our upcoming trip to Bali. Hooray!