Smocked Christmas Dress

This cute dress is a smocked bishop pattern from Australian Smocking and Embroidery.  I used a size 5 from Beautiful Bishops and then smocked it using the Ring of Roses pattern from Sew Cute Couture.  I have found that most of the traditional bishop patterns can be used interchangeably with AS&E.  Since this was very traditional, it was an easy swap for the size I needed.  I have found the AS&E's bishop pattern fits my daughter well and has just the right amount of puff in the sleeves and ease around the bottom of the dress.  The accent candy cane fabric was used around the bottom to add another whimsical element and it is trimmed with red and white whipped stitched piping.  This type of piping requires a good ironing after each wash.

This is a picture of the original dress, made only to a size 3T.  I know they look worlds different, but I think even Gain Doane (original designer) would be delighted by reusing a pattern in such a different way.  I fell in love with the whimsical Christmas print, but was stumped on how to smock it.  It needed lots of thread coverage to give it balance and cover the fabric that showed bits and pieces of the stars in the pleated fabric.  This pattern of Ring of Roses was perfect.  It has great coverage and is very fast to smock.  I dropped the roses from the original pattern and added just a button on each heart.  It really made the smocking match the candy cane stripe in the accent fabric.  

This is an up-close of the smocking.  I used red, lime green, and hot pink thread.  

The back is finished simply with red buttons all the way down the back.

My daughter looks just as cute as a button in the dress or you could say as sweet as a candy cane.