tiny bridges

Okay, it’s almost two months since Fiona’s birthday, and that means it’s time to post about her birthday dress.

This was one of the secret projects I was working on, and things just got too crazy with the holidays to post about it. I used the tutorial here as a rough guideline to start (as a side note, I really love vegbee’s tutorials and patterns. This is not the first I’ve used.). Of course, somewhere in the process of figuring out my measurements I halved everything (as one would do to make a symmetrical pattern, another idea I was toying around with at the time), so that as I gazed proudly on my “finished” skirt piece I thought it looked a little small. In spite of that, the skirt was really fun to make and I think I’ll do another one for summer.

It’s very twirly! (But hard to photograph in action).

The bodice is a made-up pattern of my own design. I really wanted it to fasten over her shoulders so I used a few purchased patterns and some of her dresses to figure out what I wanted to do. Of course then, for reasons no one can fathom, I added two inches to the width, making it much too wide for her. To fix that, I added pin tucks to the front, but I don’t seem to have any decent pictures of it. If I can get one I’ll add it later. Here’s one that shows how it was too big:

I also put a lining under the skirt, so that all the threads and seams wouldn’t be right next to her skin. It’s also helpful for twirling. You can see it a bit in this video.

I’ve been busy making her more things since we’ve been back, so I’ll post those soon.