Sunday, June 26, 2011

Why did I buy a pattern?

So my 13 year old daughter keeps growing, as they tend to do. So she has no church clothes. I made her a skirt awhile back and looked in vain for other dresses. They all have spaghetti straps or are too short these days in the store. So I tackled a dress this week. At the fabric store I told her to look at patterns while I did some other shopping. When I met her at the patterns she had found a really cute dress, but the pattern wasn't on sale. I am not in the market to pay full price for patterns ($16.95!!!). PLEASE don't EVER buy a pattern at full price. I wait for the $0.99 or $1.99 sale and then stock up on any pattern I think is cute. So we looked at the $2.99 "See and Sew" rack. There were parts of several dresses that she liked but not one pattern had everything. She wanted a summer dress but she likes long sleeves and most real summer dresses are sleeveless or spaghetti straps. So she found this pattern and really liked the SASH.
So I was supposed to build a new dress around the sash. Since I had SIX children with me (not recommending shopping at a fabric store with 6 kids), I grabbed the pattern and away we went. When I got home, I realized the pattern only came in size 8-16 women's. Well my daughter is between girls and juniors sizes so she was too small for women's size 8. So I had to figure out how to make this dress with the cool sash and

1. add sleeves
2. change the bodice lining since it has sleeves now to a yoke lining
3. Make the V neck not so deep
4. change it to a smaller size to fit a 13 year old

So after a phone call to my mom who asked "What were you thinking?", I started cutting out the fabric. I cut out a size 8 instead of cutting it out smaller, in case I cut it out too small. The yoke wasn't as hard to figure out as I had thought it would be. I used sleeves from another dress pattern, made the bodice a little shorter, tried it on several times, and hoped for the best. She is thrilled with the outcome and likes the bright, springtime colors, and she especially likes the SASH! I think it's way cuter in person and the pictures make it look a little frumpy, which it isn't.

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