Gloria’s Newest Dresses

In my quest to come up with a long sleeved dress for Gloria for the chilly weather, I came across a tutorial for a short sleeved peasant shirt.  I made a short sleeved one, then a long sleeved one, then another long sleeved one that was a bit too narrow, so I turned it into a dress for Little Miss Kinley Jo, the daughter of one of Michael’s co-workers, who is about 18 months younger than Gloria.  This is how it turned out.

The fabric is “patchwork” so, no, I didn’t sew a bazillion squares together to make this.  It was in the remnants bin at Wal-mart and looked fallish. 

After that, I took 2 yards of fabric that was originally intended to be part of my quilt that Mom made us.  It just didn’t quite fit in right with the other fabrics I had selected so we left it out.  I basically did the same thing with this one I did with Kinley’s.  I just did the sleeves a little differently and added about 5.75 yards of eyelet lace to the bottom tier and sleeves.  Gloria sees it and asks to put it on so she can “dance her dress.”  She has learned to twirl in it!

And to get a better idea of just how much fabric is around the bottom:

It hasn’t been washed yet.  It probably won’t ever stand up like this again!

Then this little girl from church showed up in a short sleeved peasant dress much like this next one.  I picked out some fabric that looked fallish and did long sleeves and this is what turned out.

It looks much cuter on the toddler than in the picture.  She’ll be wearing it tomorrow for Thanksgiving and I will try to get a good action shot of her filling it up.

And lastly, I fell in love with this Christmas fabric.  By the time I had decided exactly which fabric to pair it up with, it was time to feed the toddlers and get them in bed for a nap, so I did a really quick guestimation of how much of each fabric I wanted.  With the odd amounts I had cut, the dress practically made itself.  It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the fabric with red on green had a bit of metallic gold thread in the design that gives it a bit of sparkle.  I haven’t tried it on her with the red ribbon around the waist yet.  It may be too thin, but I sure like the way it looks on the hanger.

I have one last style kicking around in my head that I would like to sew up this season in a fabric I saw while picking out the Christmas fabric.  Then, I promise, I’ll be done with dresses.  Until summer.