Princess Dress for Baby

Rachel Madsen
6 days ago
3 min read

It all started with this dress by WAYF I bought at the Nordstrom Rack. I'd link it but it's totally sold out lol. Anyways I like it because it looks like a modern princess dress. We went out to celebrate father's day. And me being me wanted to dress my baby up to match, but she didn't own anything that matched.

We were actually in Yuba City celebrating father's day so I picked up a sheer cotton voile fabric I had stored at my mom's house. Its not an exact match, but it's close and I knew the fabric would make a pretty dress. I had a little over a yard and hoped it'd be just enough.

For the dress I decided to use this skirt.

Combined with the bodice, waistband, and straps from View B.

I used the shorts from this pattern to go under the dress

As you can see it was a small piece, I really had to work to make everything fit.

I started by folding the straps in half right sides together, and sewing to the notch. I cliped everything and turned them right side out. The bodice I folded in half wrong sides together and then fit them into the opening left on the straps, topstitching them in place.

The skirt, right sides together, I sewed front to back. Using very nice French seams, because even though this is 100% cotton, it's still sheer and delicate, and frays like crazy! I also did a nice thin rolled hem, and put a gather stitch in at the waist.

The waistband I'm not entirely sure I did correctly. It was cut on the fold so I sewed the back seam making one continuous piece. I centered the bodice onto the front of the skirt and basted it in place. I then sewed everything together. Flipped the raw edge of the waistband over encasing everything and sewed it down leaving a small opening for elastic. I strung my elastic closed up the waistband leaving me with a little something like this.

I then sewed my very last two of those giant Amazon snaps onto the back and the dress was done.

Now here's where we run into a bit of a snafoo, some how, in all this I managed to loose the shorts that go under it. And here's the thing, I know I cut out shorts, I can very clearly see them in my layout picture, so what happened to them, no idea man.

So here I have a little dress that perfectly embodies the energy of the WAYF dress, and she can't wear it, because there's no shorts to go underneath! This put the project on hold as I had to go back to the drawing board.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, my sister comes for a visit, and we go to this fabric store in Dixon I'd been dying to check out. It's called In Stitches, anyways she was looking for fabric I was mostly along for the ride.

Even though I promised my husband I wouldn't buy any fabric without a specific plan, I still ended up with a couple remnant impulse buys. I also picked some plain sea green cotton that I thought might be a complimentary color to that little dress hanging in the closet unworn.

With the fabric secured, I could begin!!!

Wrong sides together I sewed first the inseam, then I sewed the crotch. I did a nice thin rolled hem finishing the legholes. And then took a piece of elastic stretched it to fit, and zigzaged it directly to the shorts on the marked line.