three little pigs and a baby dress

It was a beautiful Father's Day weekend, so we were delighted to get out in the sunshine.  It was in the 60s earlier today, so Sophia was able to wear her new dress with some skinny jeans...something her mother never has and never intends to wear in this lifetime.

While I have very little free time these days, I use what rare moments I do have to scour the Internet for free tutorials, as well as patterns I'd like to eventually try.  My current obsession is baby attire for obvious reasons, but more specifically dresses, as they take up less fabric and seem more forgiving of errors.

I found this dress/top tute with similar end results on two different blogs: Sew Can Do and Prudent Baby.  I decided to use my Minny Muu Three Little Pigs fabric for the dress.

While I do love 100% cotton fabric, it was a wrinkled mess in no time, not to mention it was soaked in baby drool.  But the major benefit is it's light and comfortable in the heat.

I tweaked the pattern a bit: gathered and finished both the neckline on the front and back, added a button instead of snaps, decreased the width and increased the length by adding some additional pink fabric to the bottom.

As one of the tutorials suggested, I made my own bias tape for the armholes.  There are several helpful instructions online explaining how to make and sew bias tape.  Dana of MADE created an awesome video, which explains everything in greater detail.  It is wonderful and really makes a difference in the appearance of the finished product.  By cutting it correctly, it also made sewing around the curves much easier with less puckering.

Instead of leaving the bottom curve of the neck open, I sewed all the way around and just left the short end unstitched.  It was like a long tube with one opening, and it was relatively easy to pull right side out.  I did press the seams open beforehand to make them nice and crisp.

I then pressed and finished it with a straight stitch around the entire border, closing the opening before adding a button and buttonhole.

Then I attached the pink neckpiece to the body of the dress.  This step was a bit tricky for me, but fortunately it worked out (whew!).

It fits her now, but I have a feeling it won't for very long, as she's growing like a weed in only one direction.  Up.