My Sister's Belle Sundress

Continuing the theme from my last post (despite the fact I have a backlog of more seasonally appropriate things to blog), here’s something else I made for my sister last summer which she decided to pack for our Florida beach trip: A Belle sundress.

Last winter I made my sister a Slytherin themed vintage style dress using a Hogwarts house stained-glass fabric I found at Joann’s. A few months later, my sister found a similar Beauty and the Beast stained glass fabric and mentioned she’d really, really, like a dress featuring this fantastic fabric.

I filed the information away and when my sister’s birthday rolled around at the end of the summer there was a dress featuring the Beauty and the Beast fabric for her to unwrap.

She loved it!! I however, was much less thrilled as I'd screwed up the sizing and the dress turned out too big, so I had to go back and make some alterations to it. Once I got the dress to actually fit my sister however, I liked it just as much as she did.

I used McCall's M7599, a re-print of a 1953 pattern for the dress itself and added the pockets from Butterick B6055, a re-print of a 1950 pattern.

I used the stained glass fabric for the bodice, pockets, and a self-drafted band around the bottom of the skirt.

The skirt itself, the bodice trim, and the gathered straps are made from a solid blue poly/cotton broadcloth. I opted to used a poly blend fabric in an effort to avoid needing to iron the skirt of the finished dress. After 5 months of wear, this appears to have worked as I haven't ironed this dress once!

My sister wore the dress for a morning trip to the beach on our Florida trip. It was a rather chilly day so we weren't planning on getting in the water and dressed accordingly.

But gosh dang, when you don't get to go to the beach regularly (Or ever, this was my sister's first trip to the beach.), the water is just too inviting to stay out of entirely!

Before we knew it, my sister and I were about knee-deep in the water.

And my mom? She was just about all in - in her blue jeans.

We had a grand time frolicking on the beach that morning.

That afternoon we got all cleaned up and went to my cousin's wedding - which was really the whole point of this fabulous January Florida get away.

I wore my Pheobe Maxi dress to the wedding, my sister wore a really cute lace dress we found at a thrift store, paired with her gold wrap sweater later in the evening when it got chilly, and my mom wore the silk dress I made her for my brother's wedding back in November.

The wedding was beautiful and my cousin made an absolutely stunning bride.

The entire weekend was wonderful, and I more than appreciated the excuse to go to Florida in January, but after nearly 3 weeks of travel between the Uganda trip and the Florida one, it is good to be home again!