Earlier this summer I made this cute Butterick 5019 dress for my niece's birthday:
This cute and easy-to-make pattern comes courtesy of my mom's stash. Here's the front:
I was trying to come up with a way to describe this interestingly constructed dress when I realized that it's basically a toddler version of the "walkaway dress" that they made on the most recent season of the Great British Sewing Bee.
It's a smock that you put over your head- you wrap the back piece around and fasten it with the little button tab over your belly, then the front piece goes over that and wraps around to tie in the back. There's a little loop to hold the tie up so it doesn't slip down.
It's supposed to be cut in one large piece with shoulder darts to shape it, but since my fabric was one-directional, I cut it in two pieces, skipped the darts and sewed the shoulders together.
The fabric is some really cute quilting cotton I picked up here in Bangkok- coral reef fish in purples, pinks and blues, my niece's favorite colors. The fish are detailed enough that I can ID them from my time scuba diving in Southeast Asia (nerd alert!) although they are not to scale, nor are their colors true to life- a clown triggerfish, an emperor angelfish, some anemone fish, among others. All of the edges are bound with bias tape; I used pink packaged bias tape and some pretty pastel variegated thread to sew it on.
I'm really happy with how the fit turned out- perfect for wearing right away! I was a bit worried about the fit since some of the reviews online indicated that it ran big. I just went down a size as I always do for the Big 4 and it worked out great:
Zoe liked it so much she even wore it for her first day back at school... awwww:
