Florals and Solids

Here's another set of clothes I made in the spring- coordinating dresses for these four little girls!

  The floral is a rayon spandex from Sincerely Rylee... I think I bought it last year? 

All of the solids are from Girl Charlee... aqua, coral, peach, and navy. 

  I decided to go for a really simple silhouette on these, with a basic short-sleeved bodice and gathered rectangular skirt. I had some issues with the gathering, but then I usually do on knit! And I'm sure it didn't help that I was trying to stabilize it with clear elastic. I found I had to stretch the elastic the tiniest little bit as I serged it in, or the bodice seam would still wave... but I ended up overstretching it in a few places, which caused puckering.

  I had thought the floral was opaque enough by itself, but once I'd finished all four dresses it was pretty obviously NOT, so I ended up sewing four simple slips from some swim knit lining fabric, which I hemmed with stretch lace, and after a failed attempt at trimming the necklines and armscyes with lace trim, finished with a shell hem like this one using a machine blind stitch. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the slips.

  Since this was a pretty basic design, I used Jalie 2805 and cropped it just above the waist, then added the skirt- I had to grade the pattern down for Foof, but the other girls all fit in the size range now. I did notice that while the grading looks perfectly even, the amount of ease goes up and down as the sizes go up. And the edges aren't quite trued, so things form points or dips occasionally. I still think Jalie 2805 is a better option than a lot of Indie patterns, but it could definitely be improved on!

  I hemmed the sleeves and skirt with lettuce edging- I really love the way the lettuce-edging looks in this rayon knit!

  I wasn't sure about the navy at first- it's much less of a cheerful spring color than the others, but I really love how it worked in the end!

  This is the only photo I got of any of the dress backs, but they are just as basic as the fronts!

  These dresses have been worn quite a lot over the summer! I had plans to make more with the same silhouette but I'm quite behind on my sewing list (I still have 5 summer birthday gifts to make!) so that hasn't happened yet.

  I'll be back at some point with this outfit I sewed for myself in May! (Hopefully it will be less than  a month this time.) ;-)

Thanks for stopping by,