My creative space - birthday dress

This week in my creative space I made my big girl a new dress for her birthday. I searched online for a while for a pattern that wasn't too young or too old, if you know what I mean. She turned 7, so not a little girl but not big either. I found the adorable Maggie Mae pattern from Shwin & Shwin. Have you seen it? I love the beautifully simple style. Even though all the pics on their Etsy shop and blog show the dress on younger girls I thought it would be a nice bridge between little girl and tween fashion.

It features a contrasting yoke and hemline, pleats in the front and back and side seam pockets. I found the pattern instructions quite simple in that their wasn't a lot of detail, but it was still very clear, which was quite refreshing. I find the big name patterns often over complicate the instructions and can make a simple step sound tricky.

Red being her favourite colour at the moment I'd hunted for some inspiration and found a lovely ikat cotton for the body and a beautiful cherry red quilting cotton for the top and bottom. The ikat is so beautiful that I'd like to make a top myself from it. We would just have to organise ourselves not to wear them on the same day ;-). I'm imagining the dress in winter with tights or leggings, cardigan and scarf, hopefully it will be that versatile.

Despite the look on her face (she was recovering from a few days of illness and mean mum wants to take her pic), she loves the dress and says it's very comfortable to wear. Of course my little girl who's 4 would like one now. It's such a cute pattern, I'll definitely use it again. I really like the linen that Shwin & Shwin have used here, and it looks great with little embellishments (though the ikat fabric has enough detail going on). There's also a Flickr group for lots of inspiration.

Lots of creative spaces to check out over here.