"Frockstar" by AS&E Issue 91

This is an adorable dress from Australian Smocking and Embroidery magazine 91.  The pattern is for 4, 5, and 6 year old sizes.  This dress is a 6.  The smocking on this dress takes an experienced smocker about one evening to do.  The sewing on this dress takes a little longer than the normal square yoke......

The rounded neckline fell into place fairly easy.  Keeping the front yoke the correct size can be a little interesting.  I gathered the bottom of the bodice to hold the gathers in the smocking.  It still didn't seem as easy as it should have.  

The skirt of the dress has a top layer, netting layer and lining layer.  The netting layer is sewn to the top layer to make it easier to work with.  The skirt is gathered and piped at the waist.  It is also gathered and attached to the bottom of the lining.  The lining is gathered at the waist.  Do you see a lot of things gathered and sewn to the waist?  I did too.  The directions call for you to gather the lining and then hand sew it to the waist seam.  (That is if you can get all these layers to lie going DOWN: bodice front, bodice lining, piping, skirt front, skirt netting, and skirt lining.)  The fabric seam naturally falls up due to the amount of fabric going up.  So I just machine stitched the seam and then used my Viking J foot to zig-zag the seam edges together.  I normally don't let my seams show in an heirloom dress, but why fight this one.  

It is a cute dress and I love the big polka dots that I chose.  My daughter is still trying to decide if a 7 year old should wear this dress........ the bubble is to young for her she thinks..........grrrrrr!  If one person will give her a compliment, we can't get her out of it.  I just need to find that person!