Febuary Sewing Project: Pillowcase Dresses

One of my goals for 2011 is to learn to sew, like for real! So after January had come and gone with not at thing sewn I knew I had to get going. I enlisted a couple good friends to help me on my journey and they were more that willing to help! (I have the best friends!)

So I decided to break my big goal down into smaller monthly goals. 

"One project a month...with repetition."

My February project is The Pillowcase Dress. I think they are darling and from every tutorial I read I was told they would be a great "beginner" project! Perfect! With encouragement from my friends I dusted off the sewing machine, bought some fabric and began. (Ok so there was a lot more to it then that, learning to thread the machine, how to change the feet and bobbin, how to wind new thread on the bobbin, the different stitches to use etc. But regardless I began!)

 

Today I finished my first dress! EEEEEE!!! I'm so excited and happy with how it came out! Now don't get me wrong looked at closely you will notice various mistakes and imperfections. But for my first completed project, I think it turned out pretty dang good!

 

(I hope to have better pictures soon, it was already dark when I finished but was 

too excited to wait to take pictures in the morning!)

Notice this fancy little bow...yeah it's covering a mess up! Ha-ha!

The ribbon trim was an after thought and I needed to cover the seam. If I did the same thing again I'd sew the ribbon on each side separately before piecing the dress together! But you can't tell can you!!! ;)

The other struggle I had was with the bias tape under the arms. That final finishing stitch caught me in a little snag the first arm but was smooth sailing the second! I could have pulled it out and started over...but let's be real here it's in the armpit!

So all in all I'm pretty proud of my little dress! And remember what I said about how I'm structuring my goal...

"One project a month...with repetition."

Well what I did was each time I learned a new step on this dress, I would complete it on my own on TWO other dresses! Yup you got it! I have two more that will be finished pretty quick! The will be slightly different than this one in their "finishing touches" and I can't wait to show them off! Then I bought fabric last night to make ANOTHER one for my niece Aly for her birthday! The repetition has really been key in actually learning what I'm doing and I'm definitely starting to catch the sewing bug!

So this dress and the other two almost finished will hang in my studio closet for a fun little outfit choice for 12-18month girls that come visit my studio! I will admit, I tried it on Ash today (16 months) and it looked pretty fricken cute...y'know ignoring the fact that he's a boy and all! (Ha-ha, don't tell his father!) My good friend Breanne was here helping me finish it up while her daughter Aubrey and Asher played and during lunch we brought up that Asher would be joining her in Nursery soon at Church..Aubrey replied, "Yeah!! He can wear his new dress!" I thought I might go into labor I laughed so hard!

The main tutorial we used for this dress was from Prudent Baby

You can find the tutorial HERE

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