Sewing: Modern Farm Birthday Dress

Phew! One more thing finished. I have to laugh at my rollercoaster evaluation of projects as they progress. I go from thinking something will be quick and finished in no time at all to feeling like I'll never find the time to work on it again.  So I try to prioritize. After getting the invitations out for Scarlett's second birthday party I started on her birthday dress. Every party needs a new dress! And the effort just happened to coincide nicely with KCWC, so I felt I was in good company trying to find an hour or two to move this project forward.

I had a few ideas for Scarlett's second birthday dress, including designing my own fabric, but I decided on applique farm animals as something more achievable in the time frame. I love the result! I don't do a lot of applique but once I started thinking about it I came up with more ideas than I'll have time to execute for the party, so I may be in the Modern Farm mode for a bit afterwards.

I have wanted to make this dress for some time. It would be cute in so many fabrics--I chose this natural linen which has the most gorgeous hand. I love linen and think it is just fine for it to be wrinkled! I also went with fabric covered buttons, which I prefer for most things.

I almost made this for Scarlett for her first birthday, but opted for something simpler last year. It's always nice to use one of the vintage patterns I've purchased--I am such a sucker for them. This one didn't even have the envelope, which is too bad because the pattern illustration would be darling in color. I love this artist smock look! Too cute!

It would have been fun to put Scarlett in this dress and get some photos but she has been under the weather so those photos will have to wait...

It was fun designing these appliques. Cutting them wasn't as fun, but I used HeatN'Bond, which made it much easier to cut the fabric.  I think these would be darling in a small calico print too.

I wasn't quite sure how to stitch the appliques--zig zag, blanket stitch, stitch by hand.... Not surprisingly I decided to machine stitch (a time saver I thought) and used a straight stitch so as not to muck up the detail in the silhouettes. Though it may have been faster, it was a bit tricky to see through the sewing foot but it improved as I went and didn't take as long as I feared.

 

Now the question: with bow or without the bow? The bow makes it look more like a vintage artist's smock, which I like. But the dress certainly doesn't need the bow and the bishop's yoke with peter pan collar is so sweet on its own. I'll have to take some votes...