Everyone's a winner

This was such a quick pattern to sew up. It is Simplicity 3835 a Built by Wendy pattern. I didn't realise till last week that this pattern has its own flickr group.

I planned to make the dress from the 3835 pattern using my Amy Butler fabric that has been stashed away but first made the top from this Charity shop fabric. I was not sure when sewing it if I would like the end product but I really do now. Unfortunately it is too cold to wear it today, but I plan to wear it as soon as the weather warms up. It seems winter is having one last (I hope) try here today.

There is an identical piece of this fabric up for grabs this week on Zoe's fabric swap. I was lucky enough to be the chosen swapee (is there such a word?) for this week.

You see there were two pieces in the charity shop and I have used one and offered the other on the fabric swap , they were hemmed and I am not sure if they were supposed to be curtains or sheets, but I like the new lease of life this piece has as a top.

Flowery dress

I had a large piece of this flowery cotton fabric that I bought about four years ago at a second hand stall at a church fete. What better place to buy stuff than summer fetes? I am a great lover of these events as I think they are something quintessentially British but in a good way (I am not really a very patriotic person). Anyway, I digress, so I pulled the fabric out of the storage box as part of the Stash bustin project and made this little dress for my daughter. I used an old Simplicity pattern that I had found in a charity shop. It was for age 1 to 18 months and my daughter is nearly three so I had a go at resizing the pattern. You could almost hear the rusty cogs in my brain whirring as I tried to work out the pattern dimensions. I used Cal Patch's book on making your own clothes for guidance in how to resize a pattern. It is a fairly short-ish dress as I have found dresses below the knee may look very sweet but they tend to trip up a girl who wants to run around.

The original pattern pistured below, ( I made the pink dress/pinafore in the picture) has a vertical lace trim and a ribbon round the bodice - both of which I left out. I also bound the armholes with bias binding made from the same fabric. I have a big pile of this binding to use now in some more projects and also some more of the fabric to use - enough I think for another child's dress. I am thinking of trying a different pattern, though I like the look of the bloomers in this pattern picture.