An Easter Dress of Butterflies and Ruffles

Over the winter, my mom, sister-in-law, niece, and I met up for a morning of fabric shopping at a little Mennonite fabric store we like. We each picked out all sorts of fun fabrics for different projects we had in mind. My niece loved all the fabric (we're training her well) so while we were there I suggested she pick a fabric for her Easter Dress. 

There were several fabrics she considered, but finally a cotton print featuring stripes and butterflies was picked. (Apparently butterflies are the name of the game when it comes to Easter dresses for my niece! Here's her butterfly Easter dress from last year, and the one from the year before.) I bought 2 yards and promised my niece she would have the dress by Easter. I just had to find the right design for the dress. . .

Since the fabric was striped I wanted to make that a design feature - playing with the direction of the stripes for different portions of the gown. I spent a fair amount of time on Pinterest contemplating different design options. Finally, I decided to mostly base the design on the doll dress pictured above - off center buttons down the front, shoulder ruffles, and a square neckline. I'd add little puffed sleeve (since Easter was early this year and might very well to too chilly for sleeveless), a patch pocket on the skirt (because one must have pockets!), and a band around the bottom of the skirt (just an excuse to play a bit with the direction of the stripes.)

I had just the pattern to use as my starting point - McCall's 3023 - the same pattern I used for her Christmas dress, just with different alterations this time.

Really the only alteration I had to make this time was too change the closure from back to front - and that was easy!

 

And since I'd already altered a baby doll pattern to have the same lines as the little girls' pattern back at Christmas, it was easy enough to make a little matching doll dress as well. 

Well, easy as in the pattern was ready to go and it wasn't hard to sew - but I did have to play some pattern tetras to get both dresses cut out of the 2 yards of fabric I had. It would not have been possible if my sister-in-law hadn't suggested making the skirt a touch on the shorter side this year so the dress would be easy to run around in. If that dress shirt had been any longer the doll dress wouldn't have happened. Apparently next time I need to buy 3 yards of fabric to accommodate the matching doll dress better!

My niece and her parents came to visit me a couple weeks before Easter, and I was thrilled to have the dresses ready to give her - she and her mommy loved them!

I'm very biased, but I think she was one of the prettiest little egg hunters ever in her butterfly striped and ruffly dress when Easter weekend rolled around!