Butterfly Dress

Now that our weather is nice and warm hot I love wearing dresses. The only problem is the dresses I have aren't exactly nursing friendly. Meaning if I'm wearing one of my maxi dresses, I have to either take it off to feed Elise or have the whole thing bunched up under my neck. Not convenient. Or comfortable.

I found a dress at ROSS last summer that's perfect. It's knee length with short sleeves. The bodice and sleeves are shirred and super stretchy. So when it's time to feed Elise I can just pull down the whole top of the dress. Love it! I keep looking for other ones that can pull down or have straps that would slide off easily but no luck so far. My last resort was to make one.

I happened to see this pattern at Joann's a couple weeks ago and it looked like a style that would work. The dress I made is the one pictured on the bottom left but with a short skirt. It has elastic around the neck, sleeves and waist.

I wasn't sure what fabric to use though. I like the way knit drapes for a dress, more so than cotton, so I looked online for a jersey knit. I wish now that I would have gotten a solid color but at the time I wanted a print of some kind. Nothing really stood out as awesome. I kept going back to this one though because I liked the butterflies. Not a huge fan of the blue and pink flowers, but I liked the brown and natural colors in it so I placed my order.

The dress turned out great! Easy to sew and it fit perfectly.

That's the short version. You'd think that after all my little sewing disasters the past couple years I would learn to follow a pattern. That's it--just make it like the pattern says. But no.
**sigh**

Without going into all the boring details, I will share a few things I learned while making this dress:

1) Using the size/measurements on the pattern actually does work! (I used the right measurements with this dress. However, I made a dress when I was in college and I went with my regular store size, a 5, and I could barely get the dress on it was so tight!) I found out making this one that my pattern size is slightly bigger than a 5.  :)

2) Don't try to line a knit dress, even if the fabric is thin.

3) Don't try to line a knit dress with another layer of knit, even if the person at Joann's [rudely] tells you it's probably okay.    :)

4) Don't add extra length at the bottom unless you want to end up cutting it off later or have a dress that's an awkward length. 

So after picking out a couple seams and re-doing part of it, I like how it turned out! Maybe I'll look for some better fabric and try another one later. I have a feeling the second one will go much faster than the first.  ;)