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!
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.
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.
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.
Gosh, she looks so tall! She’s shot up, hasn’t she? This dress is gorgeous on her, very grown up!
I haven’t seen corduroy embroidered quite like that before. It has made a very nice dress even if it is a little late for winter.
The dress looks fantastic on Stella and the style should last for years. Lovely!
I always think Oliver + S patterns are too expensive. But each and every time I see one made up, it looks like an expensive dress…. so I eat my words! Gorgeous dress, gorgeous model 🙂
Beautiful! Love the fabric. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
Soooo adorable! And so is the dress. I love the fabric.
It’s so very cute! I made the mistake of top stitching cord, it just doesn’t work, does it?
looking very cute & grown up here Miss S!
thought I’d better pop by and say hello so you don’t think I am such a slack blogger 😛
Oh, THAT’s where I bought that fabric… I have the same. Obviously from the same place.
And that’s a very cute dress on your very cute girl. She’s looking so grown up these days….
I really like this dress and I love the colour. It looks really good on her. I never realized there was such a thing as embroidered corduroy it’s very pretty.
She looks beautiful, the colour is great on her and I love her choice of buttons.
What a fabulous dress! I love it.
And embroidered corduroy? That’s even more awesome that the denim corduroy I bought at SIT in Sydney last year!
I like it that your girls are so happy to frock up. Another classy, age appropriate fun and quirky (different colour star buttons- great design feature) dress. Ooooh, you are a lovely mum.