Hello all!
I have put together a simple dress design for my daughter which is going to be perfect for our spring trip to Cuba. Yes we are going for a short holidays and it is always nice to have something fresh, so I came up with this quick project last weekend.

The best is that you can learn a couple of professional finishes which will make the dress look very neat and fashionable.

I used a pink fabric as a base and green fabric to add ruffles and the finishing around the arms.

So we have two large pieces of material which I made exactly the same for the front and the back. I cut about 15 cm deep indentations on each side for the arms.

Now we will use French seam to connect both pieces together. First sew thru the whole length on the right side of both fabrics. Then iron it on the left side and sew it thru on the left side.  Iron it again to make  the fold flat to the left, right or centered, as you wish. Easy! Now all the threads are hidden inside and the dress will look pretty on the outside and  neat on the inside. 🙂

The next step is to finish the top and bottom edge and to add green ruffle at the bottom. I made it a bit longer which will allow this fashionable dress to last thru the whole summer season too.

Now another new trick! We will use elastic thread. You can buy it in Walmart or any fabric store. It costs maybe $1.50 and it will create a super effect on this spring dress.

The elastic thread should be rolled on the bobbin manually, please avoid stretching. Put it inside your machine and use second usual thread on top. You can be creative here and use maybe decorative threads to give the dress some sparkle 🙂

Measure and mark a few lines across the top part of the dress. Now we will do some shirring (gathering)! Simply sew straight lines on the dress. Each time stretch the material back to it’s original flat form while you are adding the next line. It is important to make the shirring straight and with similar intensity each time.

Make sure to tie all the ends properly and then we will hide them under the finish with green strips of material.

Now we can make nice bows for each shoulder and  the spring dress is ready to wear!

I hope you had fun. This girl’s dress took me about 1.5 h to finish.