A Lacey 4th of July

I gave my sister two choices. Should we decorate 4th of July shirts with fabric paint, or with red, white, and blue lace? She picked the lace.

So I handed her a bunch of lace and said "have fun!" She got to work and wound up with a fabulous 4th of July design. Meanwhile I got to work on my own shirt. 

Once all the lace was stitched down we were pretty pleased with the results!

Now you may have noticed that my little sister didn't exactly decorate a T-shirt. Yep, she decorated a dress. Originally I was going to just have her decorate a shirt, but then I got a little carried away and decided to make her a dress. My plan was to make her one similar to this frock I found on Pinterest.

I got the basic peasant dress sewn together, then decided it wasn't quite right. The front of the dress, that my sister had decorated, was great, but the dress as a whole was rather boring, just kinda blah. It needed something, but I wasn't quite sure what.

Finally I figured it out, this basic peasant dress needed an edge, an asymmetrical edge. My sister had chosen to sew stripes of red and white lace at an angle near the bottom of the dress. So I cut the bottom of the dress at the same angle, added blue and red ruffles, and then, ta-da, the perfect, lacey, ruffly, one-of-a-kind, 4th of July dress!

Just right for playing outside,

swinging,

and setting off fireworks! (poppers are her favorite!)

Happy (late) Independence Day!