London Peasant Dress for Tweens

London Peasant Dress by Lila Tueller

I needed a quick project to fit into my hectic schedule.  This dress, The London Peasant Dress, was a smashing hit with my daughter.  She loves the simple and comfy styling of peasant dresses and I have made almost every peasant dress on the pattern market.  She really likes this one!  

I lengthened the skirt on this dress because I had the fabric to do it.  I was using up scraps from other projects and thought this combination looked great.  I think another dress from this pattern is in my future!  

I will have to think about making us matching dresses, I too love this simple pattern. It was reviewed awhile back.

Happy Valentine's Day, New Look 6171

New Look 6171

This little dress is so smart looking!  I love the "grown-up" look for my 9 year old.

The fabric is Timeless Treasures from Vogue Fabrics that I picked up at the Quilt Festival back in the fall.  It is a wonderful corduroy!  Lovely to work with and drapes well!

The pattern is a quick  and easy sew.  I followed most of the directions, except for inserting the elastic into the waistband before the skirt was added.  I know my skinny, little daughter was going to need the help of the elastic to make it fit well and I dislike sewing onto gathered elastic.....  So I finished the dress and left a small opening in the waistband to insert the elastic and try it on my little one.  Presto and it was finished!

This is a great dress for any geometric print fabric you have hidden in your stash and you can't decide what to do with it.....

Another view of New Look 6171

We are always in action, even when we are getting our picture taken!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Addy's Dress, which is really her friend Harriet's Yellow/Blue Dress

Burda 9529 and Heritage Doll Fashions Harriet's Yellow Dress

This month we read about American Girl Addy.  Her time period is around the Civil War.  I already owned the Heritage Doll Fashions pattern, Harriet's Yellow Dress, so I decided that this would be the dress.  Since we don't look fantastic in yellow, our dress is blue.  I found the ocean blue Imperial broadcloth and the lace at Buttons n Bows in Houston.  This dress brought back memories of why I don't like sewing with polyester broadcloth, it isn't very forgiving when you are easing it into curved seams.......

Doll Dress Details:  

I followed the pattern from Heritage Doll Fashions to the letter.  My polyester broadcloth didn't give much and was tough to ease into the short curved seams.

Girls Dress Details:

Since I made the doll dress first, it was easy to adjust Burda 9529 to meet my needs.  I cut an extra center piece much wider and then gathered it like the doll dress.  I added a waistband and cut the skirt on the straight-grain (big rectangle) instead of an a-line.  The lace was an easy match from where the doll dress added lace.  Can you believe this is the same pattern from the Kirsten dress?  It is all in the details.........

Samantha's dress is on the cutting table.........