Blue dress with vintage lace trim

After a couple warm-up sewing projects last weekend, I couldn’t resist putting together one more dress. This time, I applied a few things I learned on the other projects – adding pockets, and leaving a bit more room at the top of the dress.

I wanted to make a plain blue dress with white lace trim, and my daughter liked this floral vintage fabric scrap in our box. We decided it was big enough to use for the pockets. The pockets are inside, so you can’t see them, but it’s something that I think makes a kid happy – knowing that their favourite pattern is peeking out of the pockets.

Since I was actually sewing this during the day, I let my daughter help. She was very keen to learn, so I let her put on a few thimbles (after this picture was taken) and learn to pin.

I didn’t have a pattern…as for instructions, I just kind of sewed the edges, sewed the pieces together, tried it on the girl, sewed some more. I’d recommend using a real pattern if you want this to turn out well…it looks cute but there are imperfections, some caused by the aged sewing machine’s quirks. I’ve been reading the Little House series to our kids, and I can’t imagine how much work it was making their clothes before they got the sewing machine in “These Happy Golden Years.”

But we had fun, and I got to do something creative besides paint. I think it’s cute! I only wish I’d started sewing things when she was two or three.