Sewing With Whimsy II

I wanted to share one more dress with you from Kari's book, Sewing With Whimsy. This dress is called, "Simple Sash Sundress". It's a beautiful, plain dress that can be changed to look either really dressy or quite casual. The simplicity of the pattern made it easy to put together in a hurry... which is exactly what I needed to do.

When one of my sons was getting married, I had the privilege of making the two flower girl dresses, the ring bearer's pillow, and the box where all cash, gift cards were to be placed. My future daughter-in-law loves hot pink, so that was her choice for an accent color. I found some gorgeous, hot pink silk dupioni on line, along with a nice dark brown for accent and set to work. Two of my granddaughters were the flower girls in the wedding so when the mom of one of them asked if I could possibly make just one more dress for my younger granddaughter I chose Kari's pattern.

There were two easy changes that I made to the dress. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel as though the armholes are just a little too big. For me, I make a small, finished, v- shaped, piece that is similiar to the old fashioned 'dickies' that women used to wear in their blouses. It looks nice, if neatly done, and actually looks like it is part of the dress pattern. The next thing I did was make a nice, wide, extra long sashing out of the brown contrast color. I made the sashing wide so that I could gather it up in two places, then sew it onto the front of the dress. The two gathered rows became my sewing and placement guides. Since I did not want anyone to see those sewing lines, I covered them with up with a row of brown crystals. I also made piping out of the brown silk dupioni and finished off the neckline and armholes with that. The piping gave a nice finished look to the dress and I loved how it stood out on the pink. My granddaughter loved the dress, as you can see below, and danced the night away in her new dress. She looked pretty cute!





This is one of my flower girl, granddaughters with one of my grandsons, who just happened to also be the ring bearer. I made the flower girl dresses out of white silk dupioni and used the hot pink as a contrast on their sashing. I made their sashing the same as the dress above, but placed pink crystals on the sewing lines. If you have never worked with dupioni, you need to give it a try. Yes, it definitely frays but it is elegant when completed.



Here is a look at the pillow, which I embroidered the words of their wedding invitation on, along with the gift box, which I covered in the brown. Great times.