fabric | The Veiled Purl

Don’t you just hate it when you have so much fabric but don’t know what to do with it? Sadly, I had a creative-block this entire week. But then finally, the other day I thought up a design and I created the Fall into Spring Dress! :)

This is suppperrr easy to make. No, really it is.

Here is what you’ll need:

-Around 1.5 yards of fabric or more. The width of the fabric should be 58″ (This will make the dress and the tights/churidar)
-Elastic Thread
-Bias Tape
-2 buttons
-Press buttons/snap buttons

***Click the pics to make ’em bigger***

The Steps:

This is a draft of the pattern I created for this dress. You could just use this to make the dress, but I’ll show you the steps too.

Cutting:

This is the bodice piece. You fold the fabric in half, so the width is 17″ and the full length is 13″ (this can be different depending on the size of your child. My niece wears clothes for 4-5 year olds.) You create a slant so that you should have a 6″ neckline and 3″ armholes. Cut the pieces.

The two skirt pieces should be 18″x36″. These are box pleat markings for the skirt. I did .5″ regular seam, and then 2″ for the first half of the box pleat and another 2″ for the second half. You repeat this pattern till the end of the skirt. (So its, .5″ mark, 2″ mark, 2″mark)

Sewing:

Shirr/Smock the two bodice pieces and then sew them together. An awesome tutorial on how to shirr/smock can be found here.

Using bias tape, we are going to make the straps. My straps were 15″ long. I left a bit on the ends to sew a clean edge. You start attaching from the back armhole and then go to the front and keep sewing until to the end of your strap.

I tried to create an actual button hole, but alas my bias tape was too strong for my machine. So, I decided to make faux buttons…that actually work. ;) so basically you attach the press button to the edges of the bias tape. Then to the front you sew a regular button.