A patriotic dress for L.Soup

I had a vision in my head for what I wanted L.Soup to wear for 4th of July this year.  I wasn't really able to find anything that matched it perfectly, so I looked into some patterns that mom and I had gotten on clearance on day while we were in JoAnn Fabrics.  Every once in a while they have some of their patterns on sale, for $1-2 per baggie.  It's awesome, and I usually have a hard time cutting myself off.  Some of those patterns are normally $10!

Luckily, one looked exactly what I had envisioned in my head:

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This is McCall's M6270, I made it in size 1.  Honestly that was a little big for L.Soup, who is almost 15 months old, so it would probably fit a child in 18 month clothes nicely.

I then set about looking for the fabrics that I wanted.  So we went BACK to JoAnn's... and I found some red, white and blue fabrics that I liked, but weren't exactly what I wanted. But I couldn't find the perfect match, so I picked them up. I was a little disappointed but figured I would make it work, since I didn't have any other options. Well then a few weeks later mom and I went to another fabric store in the area called Hancock Fabrics. As we were walking around I spotted a rack with red, white and blue. Magically they had exactly what I had envisioned! Blue fabric with white stars, and red and white stripe fabric!

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I knew I had to get it! L.Soup's going to be a little tiny ruffled flag! It's going to be so cute!

I had the pattern all cut out and ready to go, but decided that I needed to work on the boxes for her room instead.  Well, a few days ago I realized that it was crunch time... so I got in gear and started really focusing on it when L.Soup went to bed.

Well, I quickly realized that I had not purchased enough fabric for the ruffles.  I had also purchased white fabric, to make the lining and top section of the dress, so I supplemented two of the ruffles with white stripes mixed in with colored fabric.  It ended up looking really cute, so I wasn't too upset about that.  

The next road block was my inability to sew.  That's always a problem... I spent more time during this project removing stitches than I did putting stitches in.  That was unbelievably frustrating.

Also frustrating was the fact I didn't realize in advance that the pattern was designed so the first and fourth ruffles matched, and the third ruffle and the top piece matched.  You can see it in the picture at the top, which is directly from the packaging.  I didn't realize it until I already had all the pieces cut out.  My intention was to have the colors go blue, then red, then blue then red again... but it didn't work out that way because of how I followed the pattern.

I didn't finish sewing before we left for vacation, so I took the sewing machine with me.  I managed to remember almost all the pieces, except the lining part, somehow I left that at home (along with a bunch of other -- non sewing related -- things).  Luckily it wasn't absolutely necessary, and I made the dress work without.

All in all it was a good project, and it turned out really cute.  I will definitely try it again, with the right amount of fabric next time.   Here's pictures of the finished product:

Back

Front

And here are some action shots of L.Soup in the dress.  They are from my phone and she would.not.stand.still... so this is all I got.  She also had a really great bow in, courtesy of my momma... but of course I didn't take a single picture of her when she had it on.

Blatantly ignoring me.

Answering the remote phone

Mid-spin, and an nice shot of my toes.

Something else exciting with this dress:  I got to try out the KAM Snaps and pliers and that I bought earlier this month, which I plan on using to make bibs.  It was super easy and I'm pretty excited about it.  You can see the snap at the top of the neckline on the back of the dress!

Hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July!