Summer Dress

I like to sew. I enjoy it . . . but I don't know if I would say I LOVE it. Too much of a good thing . . . sometimes isn't so good.

It's fun to sew crafty things and toys for my kids, but I think I find the most fun in creating clothes. There's just something so wonderful about taking a big sheet of fabric, cutting it into pieces and then using something as flimsy as thread to creating clothing to wear. I just love the process.

I thought I would sew a lot more for my daughter, but it looks like I'm averaging about one dress a year. I usually pick a really complicated pattern, and while I like challenging myself, by the end I'm burnt out. One dress a year seems to be about right--I don't like to spend all my time front of the sewing machine.

Two years ago I made my daughter this dress:

I really wanted to do something Oriental and my mother-in-law gave me this leftover fabric from a wedding so I had no excuse. The fabric turned out to be really hard to work with, and the pattern was quite a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. And then, after all was said and done, my daughter refused to wear it because it contained black. I wish she had told be about her aversion to black before I started the dress. After a couple of months of convincing I think I got her to finally wear the dress to church two or three times before she out grew it.


This is the dress from last year:

Look how silly I am--attempting black again after the lesson I learned the year before. But I just really wanted to make this black and white dress . . . so I did . . . and then (again) my daughter didn't want to wear it. After a few months she finally decided it was one of her favorites and the dress got it's share of wearing. Thank goodness.

As this last winter dragged on, and on, and on I needed a project to keep me busy indoors. The most ingenious thought finally came to me that I should make a dress my daughter actually likes. I tend to go for fancy and frilly, while she likes simple and comfortable. A summer dress would be the perfect thing to make. I decided to let her help pick out the pattern and the fabric, then she would be sure to like it. How fun would that be!

So off we headed to JoAnn's to flip through pattern books. We had a great time.

We then popped over to look at fabric, but didn't find anything we loved . . .

So we headed over to Hobby Lobby and found a much better selection. This is what we narrowed it down to. Can you tell she likes pink?

And of course she chose the pink on pink. I really wanted the brown with flowers, but she got to decided this one. It was so much fun picking out fabric together.

And look at the simplicity! Only four simple pieces. I need to make summer dresses more often. I'm definitely liking this.

And here's the finished product. My daughter loves it! I'm so happy that we're both happy.

Nice and cool for a hot summer day.



Yes. I think I'll have to stick with the summer dresses.


I'm linking to these parties this week!

P.S. The pattern I used to make the dress is Simplicity 2270