Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Oliver + S Ice Cream Social Dress

This is Olivia's new Oliver + S dress.  It is made form the Ice Cream Social Dress Pattern .  I made the dress from a medium weight  embroidered cotton twill.  I chose to change the pattern up a bit.  I lengthened the dress by 4", adding the 4" between the bottom of the middle section and the hem of the dress. 

For the yoke, I added 1/2" to the bottom of it, so that I could assemble the yoke differently.  After reading some of the reviews on the forums for the Oliver + S site I knew I wanted to do things a little differently.  By adding the extra 1/2" to the bottom of the yoke, I was able to assemble the back yoke pieces slightly differently.  I was able to stop my sewing 1" before the end of the center back yoke pieces.  That left me with 1" to sew the back pieces together, giving the yoke a solid seam line, allowing me to put the dress back piece in much easier.  I will try to explain this and show pictures in my next posting on the dress.

I chose to stitch the skirt portion of the dress to the outside of the yoke pieces, stitching the inside yoke by hand.  The pattern calls to do this differently and perhaps one of these times I might do it that way.  I like hand stitching and this was a nice project to take along to stitch.







The dress assembles together easily.  I am playing with this pattern to get ideas for making dresses for Destiny Dresses and to do so in a way that is simple and quick.  This is an excellent pattern, easily put together with clear instructions.  The length for the dress is short for my liking, but that is easily adjusted. :)

Carol

Monday, June 6, 2011

Swimdress



We finally took pictures of Olivia's swimdress. Unfortunately, it was at night, before getting ready for bedtime. No sunshine or beautiful green outdoor pictures. Olivia decided to be silly....it was quite funny.





The patterns used were the Girls' Regency dress Pattern and Girls' Pantaloon pattern. The skirt portion of the swimdress was just a rectangular piece of fabric that I gathered and attached to the pantaloon part of the dress. I re-purposed an old swimdress of her sisters that was hardly used, but the material was too good to throw away, so I used it for this one. I'm not excited about this swimdress, I liked the older one better. The suplex for the skirt in the older one is very nice. I think I might go back to that style for the next one. With the way she is growing these days, I could easily see needing to make another one before the summer is out....maybe.

At least Olivia had a swimdress to wear in time for lessons and now the lessons are more than half way finished. :)

Good night,

Carol