Birthday girl dresses

For Jane's fourth birthday, I made dresses. This is a girl who loves to wear a dress, even when the occasion would make trousers more practical. So I made her a couple of more practical dresses in a lightweight tartan, to be worn with leggings or trousers when it's not so warm, for nursery school. Those are on this post.

But I also made her a more flouncy dress for her summer holiday - much to her parents' dismay, he loves pink frills and bows.

This dress is made to the same design as the widi dress I made for her last year, see here. In the picture above, made exactly as per pattern, I once more found that the pattern makes up very long, so I shortened it by about 4" to knee length, and don't yet have a picture of it in wearing. But this below is the shortened version.

It's very full, as you can see below - and this is with me having reduced the width to fit the amount of material I had available.

I found this lace trim bias binding and thought it would look nice around the widi dress.

However, round the bodice trim, Jane found it too 'itchy', so I replaced it with the same satin bias binding I'd already used for the straps.

One other feature is worth mentioning. With all three of the Widi dresses I made last year, all were too long initially, but pretty soon all were too tight on the chest, so I ended up having to undo all one side and add in extra elastic at the back. So this time, I made it in such a way that it should be much easier to unpick and neatly expand the back.

First, I made the casings for the two lines of elastic exactly as the designer suggests.

Then, I threaded 1/4" elastic through one casing, securing it at the first end. But instead of cutting it off when I got the elastic through to the other side, I left it in a loop and threaded the same piece of elastic back through the other casing. Then I secured that end of the elastic at the same side as I started from, 

It then remained to pull up the elastic loop to the right size, adjusting both casings to be pulled up the same amount, and secure the long loop on the loop side of the dress. To stop it rubbing, I encased the loop in a bias binding channel.

So I'm hopeful now that when the time comes, as it probably will, for me to be called upon toe loosen the top a bit, I can just unpick the last bit I secured, loosen the elastic a little, and then re-secure it.

Footnote: eventually even my encased elastic proved too itchy, so I've taken it off. If I have to enlarge I will just have to unpick.

Footnote 2: Exactly a year on, it fits her so much better!