KCWC paisley dress

I found this purple paisley-ish patterned light weight cotton in my mum's stash last time I visited her and instantly envisaged a dress for my little girl. Not sure where it comes from but I seem to have a bit of a thing for paisley, and when colourful little flowers are added it makes for a design that's kind of crazy but sweet at the same time - a bit like my girl ;-)



As my girl loves to dress herself and gets extremely upset if she can't get something on (she is 3, after all) I wanted to make it as simple as possible (unlike this one) so made the front section elasticised and then stitched down the bows so that they are purely decorative - no more "mum, can you tie it up" ;-)



There are plenty of patterns and tutorials around for this style of dress known as the 'Pillowcase Dress", but it's pretty easy to make up if you've made anything like this style before. I traced the basic shape of the armhole and length from one of my girl's existing dresses, and used this tutorial for the elastic & bias binding combo.



To stop it looking too much like a nightie I added a little gathered pocket to the front and bound the top in matching bias binding.



And despite the 'sooky-la-la' look on her face in the above pic she loves her new dress and wore it happily today.

I also made something else from this fabric, hopefully show you tomorrow, as well as a repurposed skirt that's not gone so well but I'm hoping to salvage. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!