The First Day of School Outfit

Summer Break was short this year!! Two weeks ago, two out of the three kids I nanny went back to school, and my little sister, my baby sister, started high school! Where did the summer go? It seems just yesterday the school year ended and I was looking forward to a summer of entertaining the kids with library trips, afternoons at the pool, and days just spent at the house reading fun books out loud to all three or baking cookies together. Now another summer full of days like that are past. And let's not talk about where the years have gone. . . my sister, in high school!?!?!

With the new school year comes the Winter Wear Designs Back 2 School blog tour - which I use as an excuse to make make my sister a new first day of school outfit that we design together. This year, I went the long way around making her just what she requested.

In preparation for this blog tour I handed my sister my computer and told her to pick a couple of patterns from the Winter Wear Designs website and I'd make them up for her for the new school year.

The very first pattern to catch her eye was the Crop Dress. While it is a beautiful dress, it's not really what I had in mind when I said "pick out some back to school patterns". It's more of a "special occasion" pattern than a "school" pattern. Thus I vetoed the idea, and my sister went back to looking at patterns.

After a bit of looking and a bit of discussion, we settled on the Boulevard Skirt  (which she's been wanting me to make for her since I made myself one back in the spring) and a couple different top patterns. While these hadn't been her first choice, she seemed relatively excited about them, so I printed out patterns, pulled together fabrics, and began making her a first day of school outfit.

As my sister has been wanting a Boulevard Skirt for months now, that was the first thing I got started on. She picked out a beautiful blue, rose-printed quilting cotton from my stash and requested a hi-low skirt from it.

I had two yards of this fabric, which was gifted to me by my grandma several years ago. That wasn't quite enough fabric for the full length hi-low, like I'd made myself, but it was just enough for the knee length hi-low. As my sister really liked the fabric, she agreed to the shorter skirt option.

While not quite as dramatic as the full length option, it still flows out elegantly as she walks!

The finished skirt met my sister's expectations, so next we just had to decide what to pair with it. We'd picked out a couple different shirt patterns on the WWD website, but once the skirt was done, the shirt options we'd considered both just seemed too fussy to pair with it.

This skirt needed a basic top which would compliment it, rather than compete with it as the focal point of the outfit. Options were discussed. My fabric stash was dug through. What would work well with a rose-printed, button-front, hi-low, skirt??

In my stash we found a scrap of sparkly black cotton/spandex jersey (left over from the remnant I used to make this tank top and trim these). It looked great with the blue rose printed skirt! The only problem was, well, there wasn't enough of the sparkly jersey left to make an entire shirt!

After considering our options, we decided to use the sparkly fabric for the front of a tank top. I had some solid black cotton/spandex jersey we could use for the back of the tank top.

With this decided I pulled out the Starting Point Tank pattern, squeezed the front onto my sparkly fabric scrap, cut what little fabric was left after that into 2" strips to piece together for neck and arm bands, then cut out the back from the solid black jersey and sewed up the tank top. All in under an hour start to finish!

The finished sparkly tank top was just the thing to pair with the blue rose skirt for my sister's first day of class!

Unfortunately, the kittens could not go to class with her. They had to stay home.

When all was said and done, the first day of school outfit I made my sister was absolutely adorable, but I began to feel a little bad for not making my sister what she had really wanted - the Crop Dress. Thus, I decided to make one more addition for this outfit.

I found a remnant of silver lace in my fabric stash (bought at Joann's for a project we decided against using it on) and I used it to make the crop top part of the Crop Dress pattern.

This little lace crop top dresses up the skirt and tank top outfit, taking it from "school outfit" to "special occasion outfit"

It was fun to make this fancy little piece and surprise my sister with it!

I love how it looks with the Boulevard Skirt, dressing it up but not detracting from it!

I can also envision this worn with skinny jeans for a less dressy look.

My sister has also suggested I make her some solid colored dresses to wear with this lace top.

So perhaps I will actually make her the Crop Dress, now that I've already made her the top portion of it!

I think we've come full circle and I could have saved some myself some work by making her the dress she really wanted right from the beginning - but then she wouldn't have gotten a sparkly tank top and the button front skirt she asked for months ago. And every girl needs a sparkly tank top!

*I received these patterns for free in exchange for blogging about them, but all opinions expressed are my own.

Don't miss out on any of these inspirational posts:

Monday:

Suzanne of Winter Wear Designs

Tuesday:

Alyssa of The Sewing Goatherd

Laurie of Make it Sew with the Bear and the Pea Atelier

Diane of Sewing with D

Wednesday:

Suzanne of Winter Wear Designs 

Jessica of Jot Designs

Thursday:

Alyssa of The Sewing Goatherd

Rachel of Violets and Jewels

Jackie of Jaxx of All Trades

Friday:

Suzanne of Winter Wear Deisgns

Laura of Custom Made by Laura

Liv of Liviality