Sleek, Sophisticated, and Little Girly?

For the past two weeks I have been at training camp in Georgia, getting prepared to go on the World Race come January. Meanwhile at home, my youngest two siblings were participating in the annual homeschool co-op play, and I was missing it! I was not happy at all about this. I was rather sad in fact. I'm well aware that I'll miss lots of things while I'm gone next year (think of how much my sister will grow! She'll be a teenager when I return late 2017!), but I wasn't ready to start missing things, like this play, just yet!

Ok, I'm done with my pity party. I really am thrilled beyond words to get to go on the World Race, it's just hard to leave my family behind.

Now, back to the play. It happened last week, and while I don't get to see it (my best friends were left with instructions to go in my place) I did at least get to make my sister's costume.

The play was called Cactus Pass. My little sister got to play a rich little girl stranded in Cactus Pass with the rest of her rich family. As such she needed designer-esque clothes. I googled "children's designer clothes" and discovered that as long as her outfit was cute and colorful it could pass as "designer" on stage, so I planned to make her something bright, colorful, and ruffly. Then the directors said they wanted her to wear something sleek and streamlined. Oh. That sounded like a lot less fun to make.

Not sure where to begin on the designing process my mom and I sat down one evening and began to look up ideas for a sleek and sophisticated little girl's dress. After a couple hours we found what we wanted.

Elegant, but with a touch of little girl. Off to the fabric store we went first thing the next morning. We picked out a pink textured linen (my sister was pretty insistent that since her character was a 5 year old girl the dress needed to be pink), a taupe matte satin for the details, and a gorgeous metallic lace. In my stash I had an incredibly soft cotton satteen sheet that would work perfectly as the lining.

Design figured out? Check. Fabric picked out? Check. Now for the pattern.

I adapted Simplicity , a basic A-line dress pattern, to have a center panel and a square neckline. Those adjustments didn't take long so soon I was ready to sew!

This dress needed to look high class so I was very methodical with my construction steps. I sewed the lining and outer fabric as one in such a way that every seam was entirely encased. There are no raw edges or seam allowances visible anywhere inside this garment! I usually don't take much time making the insides of my projects "pretty" so it was rather fun to do this for a change. I carefully inserted an invisible zipper in the back and used my sewing machine to finish the dress with a blind hem. (Surprisingly I didn't have to do any hand sewing on this dress!)

Finally I decorated a coordinating hat to complete the costume. (Now this I did hand sew.)

Costume done, I got to go see a dress rehearsal of the play the night before I left for training camp. Though the play was not completely polished yet (approximately 2 weeks before opening) I loved getting to see it! That night brought back a lot of memories from when I was in high school doing plays. I left feeling confident that come preformance night the kids would nail it and the play would be amazing. According to those who got to see the play, it absolutely was and the kids surpassed expectations! 

I'm pretty darned proud of these two! I'm sad to miss a year of their life next year, but I know God has called me to do the World Race next year and I'm excited to get to do it!

P.S. If you're interested in hearing about what I was up to while my siblings were stars check out my World Race blog!