Lotus Blossom Coatdress

This girl had a bad day yesterday. Actually, despite the fact that it's been Christmas for the past two months, she's been having a rather bad lately.

I had a long talk with her, and we are going to work on all that a little more hardcore. It seems her sweet spirit doesn't handle the rigors of life (eating dinner! picking up toys! what, I can't whine 24/7?!) so well. Poor thing.

Well, last night I overheard her tell her brother that, "this was my worst day ever."

I felt bad for her, so I made her this dress to wear to school today.

See? I can be a nice Mommy.

Fabric: Glorious Amy Butler Lotus Blossom and Lotus Dots. Oh sigh. I have yards of the pink colorway for this, so I portioned out 2.5 for this dress and left the other 2.5 or so for me. (I plan to make the cover bag from The Queen's new Style Stitches book.)

Pattern: Ottobre Design Magazine 5/2006, #13. This was the first Ottobre magazine I ever purchased, and one of the first Ottobre patterns I ever sewed way back when. I made it up in pink corduroy and slaved, slaved, slaved over the pictured version. This time around I left off the tiered skirt & embellishments, and did my own thing.

I couldn't help but notice how any boutiquey tie-y dress I sew tends to become untied. Not good for when you're sending your daughter off to school every day. She comes back with the oddest hack-job knots to keep her belts/sashes/bows from coming off.

Instead of that misery, I hammered on some of my trusty Snap Source snaps with my size 14 snap press. I wanted to keep the bow look, so I hand sewed a bow over each top snap. Voila! It's faux bows.

I just love this collar. Whew, was it so much less of a headache this time. I think the first time I made this pattern, it was something like three years ago? Well, I have gotten much better at sewing in those three years. Thank God. I hope to improve in the next three, and the next three after that. Practice makes better, it truly does!

Oh! And I also adore my Clover bias tape maker. I have the 1" one. Or maybe it's 7/8"? Anyway, you cut 1 7/8" strips, feed 'em through the little tool, and out comes your bias tape! Since I needed double-fold for this, I then folded it in half again. Great, great little notion.

She was happy about her dress, but you can see the glimmer of World Burden lingering in her eyes. Sigh.

Nevertheless, life in a huge warm pink twirly dress is infinitely better than life in something else.

And just because I found these other pics when I uploaded, here is a shot my husband took of the little stinker who is partly to blame for her Worst Day Ever.

Isn't he awful?

Until next time.

Love, Me.