Of course, when I bought the fabric, I'd planned on making the dress right away - within a week or two, or at least within a month or two! As is often the case with fabric purchases however, I did not get around to the intended project as soon as I'd anticipated. A year later, the drop-waisted butterfly dress had not been made, and the fabric was still sitting on my shelves, in a bin with other fabrics, waiting.
Who knows how long this fabric would have remained in that bin, hidden amongst the other fabrics in my stash, had it not been for this month's Winter Wear Designs blog tour "All Dressed Up". When the blog tour theme was announced, I suddenly remembered this fabric, and the plan I'd had for it. With the addition of a simple gathered skirt, the Classic Shell pattern by Winter Wear Designs would work beautifully to make my sister a sweet and pretty drop-waist dress.
So, that's exactly what happened, Suzanne (the designer behind Winter Wear Designs) sent me the Classic Shell pattern, and I turned it into a dress. I cut out the pattern in my sister's size, making no changes, except to cut the back bodice piece with a center back seam, rather than on the fold, to conserve fabric. Then I cut two 14"(ish, I didn't actually measure, just eyeballed) strips of material the full width of the fabric.
These two strips of fabric were gathered up and sewn to the bottom of the Classic Shell shirt to make a skirt. This was ridiculously easy to do, and produced a beautiful result.
When called to the sewing room to try on the finished product, my sister was quite pleased with her new dress. It fit her wonderfully, and was perfectly lovely, fluttery, and springy. Just the thing to wear on Easter Sunday!
Personally, my favorite part of the dress is the sleeves. I love tulip sleeves, so when I saw the Classic Shell offered them as an option, there was no doubt in my mind what type of sleeves this dress would have.
As for my sister, I believe her favorite feature of the dress is the button at the back keyhole opening. You can't see it in the picture (because I couldn't get the camera to focus on it at all) but the black shank button has a little hummingbird etched on it. My sister found this lone button in a large lot of vintage buttons I was gifted. We decided the little fluttering hummingbird was the perfect finishing touch for a dress already featuring fluttering butterflies and tulip sleeves
Now I couldn't let my sister have all the fluttery dress fun, could I? Originally, I had no intention of making myself something for this blog tour, nor did I have specific plans to make myself an Easter Outfit. Then Winter Wear Designs released a new skirt pattern, the Boulevard Skirt, and I just had to make it for myself. So, I asked Suzanne if I could have that pattern too for this blog tour, and she agreed, very quickly, and sent it to me.
The Boulevard skirt is a button-front skirt, with multiple different length options, plus two high-low length options. It was the maxi length high-low option that caught my eye when the pattern was released. It was fabulously swooshy.
Thus, it took no time at all for me to decide which version of the Boulevard skirt to make myself. All I had to do was decide what fabric to make it out of. I loved the butterflies on my sister's dress fabric, and wanted my skirt to also have a butterfly theme. The only problem was I had no other butterfly fabrics in my stash.
Intending to only use fabrics from my stash to make my outfit, I considered making the skirt from a solid colored fabric and appliqueing butterflies on. I'd gotten as far as finding a couple different suitable plain fabric options for this plan, when I wound up at Hobby Lobby with my brother's girlfriend.
At Hobby Lobby I found the prettiest green quilting cotton, covered in little green dragonflies. The dragonflies were accented with teal, so they would match the butterflies on my sister's dress fabric wonderfully. I admired the fabric for a couple moments, wondering if I should actually buy it, when my brother's girlfriend wandered over, took one look at the fabric, and said "That fabric screams Alyssa, you have to get it."
She convinced me (not that I really took that much convincing), so I bought it, along with a yard of teal rayon/spandex to make a matching Outer Banks Boat Neck (arguably my favorite WWD pattern, seeing as I've made it 10 times now!) to go with the skirt.
I used my scalloped neckline hack for the shirt and chose to make the sleeves short and fluttery by cutting out the short bishop sleeves, included in the pattern, and just leaving off the bottom band/cuff. I chose not to hem the sleeves as I didn't want to mess up the drape of the sleeves with the weight of a hem. Knit fabric doesn't really fray, so this works just fine.
To tie the whole look together I finished off my skirt with teal vintage buttons, found at a local antique mall last fall.
I had two different sizes of these buttons and there card of smaller buttons contained the perfect number for my skirt. I'll save the larger buttons for a future project - buttons of this pretty color are sure to be needed again!
Teal and green are some of my favorite colors, butterflies and dragonflies just make me happy, so combine the two, and I really love how my sister's and my Easter Outfits turned out this year!
They're different in style, but similar in theme and wonderfully fluttery! Just the thing for getting all dressed up on Easter Sunday and throughout the rest of the spring!
A Huge thank-you to my cousin Kate for taking pictures of my sister and I Easter Afternoon!
*I received the patterns used in this post for free in exchange for this blog post, but all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
Don't miss out on any of the stops on the All Dressed Up Blog Tour:
Monday 4/22
Lisa of Mabey She Made It
Suzanne of Winter Wear Designs
Tuesday 4/23
Gwen of Crafty Curly Couture
Wednesday 4/24
Patricia of Sew Far North
Laura of Custom Made By Laura
Thursday 4/25
Alyssa of The Sewing Goatherd
Rachel of Violets and Jewels
Friday 4/26
Aurelie of Maglice and So
Laurie of The Bear and The Pea Atelier
Oh my goodness - I LOVE what you made!! That dress is gorgeous. I want one now. And your skirt looks amazing! I enjoyed reading your post! Thanks for sharing! :)
ReplyDeleteYour outfit makes me positively jealous! From the colors to the cut. I love how you coordinated to pull the teal out in your skirt. And I have been dreaming of a top with scalloped neckline since february. You've definitely given me an itch this time, only I know I won't find such an attractive material in my stash...
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