children's clothing, kids clothing, sewing

apple picking dress

This is the dress that was going to be Stella’s 5th birthday dress, back at the beginning of June.  I finished it on Friday.  In October.  Oh well, it’s not as though I didn’t make her a different dress for her birthday!

Apple Picking Dress for Stella, size 5

The pattern is the Oliver + S Apple Picking Dress. I sewed this in size 5 for Stella, and the length is perfect. It’s still relatively wide though, and she’ll get plenty of wear out of it for the next couple of years, I think. She chose the double frilled skirt and 3/4 sleeves.

Apple Picking Dress for Stella, size 5

Stella chose the star shaped buttons too. As she said, “I’m Stella – I’m a Star! The buttons need to be Stars!” Only one row of buttons are functional – the other row is decorative.

Apple Picking Dress for Stella, size 5

The embroidered corduroy came from Darn Cheap Fabrics (as did the buttons). It is lovely and soft, and the colour really suits Stella. I don’t quite know how to describe it – a grey toned dark teal? If I were making this again in this fabric there are a couple of things I’d do differently. The pattern has you attach the neck and the sleeve bands by machine to the wrong side of the fabric, then flip it to the right side and secure it with top-stitching. I’d decided to skip the top-stitching because it just didn’t look great on the corduroy, so I invisibly hand-stitched the bands in place on the right side. It would have been better to sew them to the right side and then hand-stitch on the wrong side. But if you were using a flatter fabric, the original instructions with the top-stitching would be fine.