My Valentine's Dress

Welcome to the first official post of my new sewing blog!  As you can see I have imported all the sewing posts from our family blog.  I decided I wanted a sewing blog - a blog that is everything about sewing!  All the posts will be sewing related.  All buttons on the right column are sewing related.  The blog roll on this blog is a list of sewing related blogs that I follow!  I feel like I can have a lot of fun with a sewing blog and I am so excited about it!!

Ok - enough about that!  Now on to my valentine's dress that I just completed!!  WHOO HOO!!

For the skirt I used this tutorial that I found for a waistband bow skirt!  I used that tutorial for the waistband that had attached ties.  But instead of following the tutorial for the skirt I decided to do a circle skirt.  I really liked the results!

Here is the front of the skirt...

 Here is the back of the skirt - showing the tie.

For the top I used this picture that I found online for my inspiration.

I loved the bows at the neckline! I decided for my shirt to make a peasant style top (with the elastic neckline) and then just attach the bows.  I decided to keep the sleeves loose instead of putting elastic at the edge of them (that is on most typical peasant tops).  I was really pleased with the results and thought my bows turned out looking a lot like the bows in the picture!!

Here is one final view of the entire outfit!!

Alyssa's Valentine's Dress!!

 I DID IT!!!  I can't believe I did it!!  I made my first dress without a pattern, without a tutorial to follow!!!  Of course it didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked....but I am just learning and I am just glad that in the end, after many trials and errors, and much work with a seam ripper, that I successfully completed it and it is wearable - LOL!!!  :-)

I just looked through several pictures of dresses online that I liked and sat at my table with several different fabrics and figured out what I wanted to do!  (side note:  the red polka dot material, all of the material on the bodice of the dress, and the heart material were actually cotton tea towels that were on the $1 aisle at Target!!!  I had seen a post of a lady making skirts out of them and originally was going to do that but decided to use them in this dress instead!)

The dress actually looks better on Alyssa than on the hanger - so here she is modeling the dress.  Unfortunately she wasn't in much of a modeling mood this morning.  Oh well!  (she's eating her cereal in this picture)

 Here is the back of the dress.  It has an elastic kind of shirr take off in the middle.  I want so bad to take a stab at shirring but my wal-mart is out of the elastic thread.  I have looked several times.  I just haven't had a chance to make it to another store to find it.  So I just used elastic for this.  It worked, thankfully!

 And see those pretty red sparkly shoes??  Her granny bought those for her this past weekend and she loves them!!!  (Even though they are still a bit too big)

Yay!  I am glad I got it done!  Even though it didn't come out as good as I had envisioned...I think it still turned out pretty good!