A pillowcase dress

Lately, little girls from our church have been wearing "pillow case dresses" that their moms made for them (well, I think a few I saw were store bought at a boutique).  I thought they were adorable, and may be a good idea for a sewing project for Nicole.

Yesterday, we went to the fabric store and I let her pick out her fabric.  My friend Gabby gave me a pattern.  Between the pattern and this website, I made up my own version of the dress

We began.  We cut and we sewed and we even ironed!  Nicole worked on the machine a bit...but sat with me the whole time.  She asked question, worried about my fingers and watched for 2 hours while we worked on her dress.

If you use an actual pillow case, I bet the dress would take 30 minutes to make :)

I almost quit when I realized I had to use bias tape on the arm holes.  After three attempts, I got the two arm holes done, and they actually look good!

The dress needed something.  Nicole suggested adding some ribbon dangling down from the dress.  Instead, we found some lace my grandma had given me and added that to the bottom. Then, we covered our unexpected seam line with a strip of wide ribbon at the bottom.

I think the finished dress is really cute.  It's  a little to big (however, it ought to be fairly baggy...it's just what those dresses are like), and the arm holes are almost to small.  Other than that...I am super happy with how it turned out.

Now, I need to get Hannah's made.  She was bummed that hers wasn't ready when she got up.