My First Crazy Dress

I happened upon an amazing children’s clothing book at Barnes and Noble the other night.  I think it has consumed almost every waking moment since I brought it home and it has revolutionized my approach to children’s clothing.  I will blab about it more later, but right now I wanted to show you a before and after of a dress I have been working on for Anna.  I have been combing through couture sewing books exploring different techniques.  I selected a simple A-line dress to experiment with.  As you can see I used french seaming or bias binding on all of my interior seams (that little tiny hem you see there took me hours, between the hemming of the ruffle, attaching it to the dress, applying the binding – the yellow ruffle alone went through the machine six times before it was even attached to the dress!).

 

The problem was it was boring – at least as far as Anna was concerned.

Enter amazing new book and endless brainstorms.  I spent the entire next day in my studio making ruffles and trims and just playing.  So fun.

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In the end Anna still did not like it because of the sleeves (she complained about the style from day one – and when Anna doesn’t like something that is the end of the discussion.  Period.).  So I gave it to one of my nieces who healed my wounded pride by saying she loved it.  (By the way, that peachy-green thing sticking out is a swim suit, not part of the dress.)  And can I just also add that there is a ton of hand-sewing done on that dress – hours and hours, people – look at that sleeve – I won’t go into all the details but that sleeve alone accrued about 3 hours of hand-stitching.

I think it turned out beautifully.  I learned some very valuable lessons.  The first and most important being if Anna doesn’t like what I propose to her at the beginning she won’t like it in the end, no matter how many ruffles are on it – so change the plans while they’re still on paper.  The second thing I learned is HAVE FUN!  Once I let go of making an article of children’s clothing look classic or timeless I had a lot more fun designing it.  The third thing I learned is the seam ripper is my friend.  Not only does it allow me the freedom to try something out and then remove it or tweak it if it does not work, but it allows me to get my seam or my embellishment or my whatever as perfect as I want.  The fourth thing I learned is to take my time – don’t finish a project just to finish it.  If I need a break for a day or two or three I take it so that every time I sit down to work I love what I’m doing and I can put all of my creative energies into making something amazing and wonderful.

Here’s what’s on the drawing board (actually I finished most of it today – just a few more ribbons and ruffles to add).  I can’t wait to show it to you!