Shirred dress in yellow

Some time ago S found a necklace at a local flea market and bought it. She showed me the picture of a brown haired girl on the pendant and she wanted a similar dress that was on the girl. I thought this gave me a perfect opportunity to practice my skills and make a shirred dress.

This mustard yellow jersey knit has been in my stash for quite some time and the colour matched exactly. I, however, wanted something practical that S could wear over the summer. As I had learned how to shirr early this spring I decided to make a shirred dress with tied straps and a frilly hem. I found this nice tutorial on how to make a pretty shirred girl’s summer dress and got my pattern from there. The pattern is also in the book The Great British Sewing Bee: Fashion With Fabric:

Anyway, I decided to add a frill to the hem, so I chopped about 20 cm off from the hem. I then used my serger to create a nice frill. As I was sewing I made tutorial videos on how to gather fabric with a serger and how to create rolled hems. The videos are at least for now in Finnish, but if people want I may make English videos the next time I’m making something similar.

The sunflower hairpin

I think that this kind of shirred dress is super easy to make and looks really nice on S. To complete the outfit S also wanted to have a sunflower pin to decorate her hair. I used the same jersey and sewed a few pieces together to make petals. I did not use any pattern but just run my machine over double fabric. S helped me by turning the petals the right way up. After a little press I then sewed the petals on some craft felt and the covered the centre with another piece of brown craft felt. I finished the hair flower by sewing an old hairpin under the flower.

Here is a closer look:

I got the flower pin finished just before S had to leave for her friend’s birthday party, so it was a perfect opportunity to test the new outfit. I managed to get a few hurried snaps before we had to dash. The gift bag contains also something handmade! S asked me to make her friend a Marina romper that she likes so much. I think the birthday girl liked the romper because she too has been asking if I could make something pretty for her. Many mums complain that their school-aged children don’t want to wear homemade clothes. I hope that as long as S’s friends want to be dressed by me I can continue making her clothes by myself!

I hope you enjoyed this post and thanks for reading! Happy sewing!

Katja