Pascha Dress

Today's work was sewing dd2's Pascha (Easter) dress. I cut it out yesterday, so it only took me two hours to put it all together. It is based on Simplicity 4163, which is a girl's blouse pattern in the "That's So Raven" line. I altered it in the following ways:

1. Instead of messing with an interfacing around the neck line, I just lined the whole thing. It's much simpler, and the fabric we chose was so thin it had to be lined. I always opt for lining something rather than messing with interfacing if I can.

2. I lengthened the bottom part of the blouse to be the skirt. It falls to just below the knee.

3. Because of the embroidery on the fabric itself, we decided not to put any lace trim on the dress.

I really like the way this turned out. It looks even prettier on my daughter, but since I don't post pictures of my kids on the internet, the hanger photo will have to do.

The dress has sort of a modernized "Pride and Prejudice" look about it, which is cool, since my daughter just got done reading and enjoying that book.

I highly recommend this pattern (Simplicity 4163), even for someone without very much sewing experience. There are no buttons or zippers to mess with and it goes together very nicely. Fashionable, too.

It is difficult, these days, to find non-skeetchy-looking girl's clothes (especially Easter dresses, most of which look like they are made out of lingerie fabric and are not much more substantial...don't get me started!). And the other extreme...so very very frumpy in the name of "modesty"??? I think not, either. I think we hit upon the right balance with this one.

Here's the pattern: