A quick zebra dress for a book week parade

A asked to go to her school book week parade as Savannah the Zebra Fairy (from the Rainbow Magic Fairy book series).  A quick visit to Spotlight and A selected the fabric - a stretch zebra velour!  Thankfully we agreed on a simple shift dress.

The cut-out

I will say now that I really did not enjoy making this dress, even though it only took a few hours.  The material was difficult to work with and I am not confident with stretch fabrics, so I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out.  But A was delighted with it and I was happy with that.

Front

Back

The finished product, complete with boots and necklace.  But A decided to ditch the fairy wings at the last hour.

A happy camper!

Party dress for a daughter

One of my daughters, S, wanted to dress as Honey Wheeler from the Trixie Beldon mystery book series for this year's book week parade at school, and all the pictures that she had seen had Honey wearing lovely summer dresses. There wasn't any similar dresses in the shops that were affordable, so I decided to make a dress for her.  S picked out the fabric from Spotlight (a printed cotton stretch sateen) and we chose a pattern that she liked.

Simplicity pattern 1382

Dress C was selected

Due to her height, I cut a size 10 pattern but with the length of a size 12 skirt. The dress turned out well, but the sewing instructions were woeful for installing the the zipper.  I managed to get it in, but it wasn't as easy as other zippers I have put into outfits (I ended having to do my own thing to get it to work).

Most importantly, S loved it and it's now her favourite dress!  What a winner!  It will do very nicely as her "party dress" for this summer.

Front

Back detail (S loves this!)

First shaped dress!

Front pleats

And finally - at the book week parade!

A happy customer :)