April 11, 2017

Belle Play Dress

I was most excited to try out this Belle play dress because she's my favorite (of course!) and I knew it would be a challenge. I'm a mediocre seamstress- the biggest projects I've ever done were a few formal dresses in high school when I was really into fashion design and planned to study it in college. 

They were simple, I picked a pattern and fabric and followed the instructions. Nothing was super wild although I did make a skirt with a detachable train, added jewels to a Gap tank top, and made a purse to match my outfit and my date's shirt and tie. In the picture at the dance they made him hold my purse. hahaha!!

When I think of Belle, the two things that stand out are red roses and that big, flouncy skirt swirling around the ballroom. 

The base dress came from Primary.com again (with matching shorts again!) and this one turned out to be my favorite... and I think Abby's also since it was the first one she wanted to wear on our trip, which coincided with the day the live action version of the movie opened in theatres. She's also worn it since we've been home. 

 

I kept the top simple- I started with just 3 rosettes but decided it needed 5 after letting it sit for awhile. These were just glued on and pinned in place until they dried. Simple!


Please notice the run in the fabric in the middle of this photo! It just shows how lots of mistakes are hidden in this dress and I'm not pretending to be an amazing seamstress!

To make the flouncy skirt, I folded the yellow fabric and sewed one long end, then flipped it right side out (it was one long tube). I didn't even iron it at this stage.

Then I gathered it up and pinned it to the edges of the skirt, let it out and re-pinned as necessary to make it look right, and then I just sewed a straight light across the bunch of fabric to attach it to the skirt. Over and over until all of the flounces were attached.

They looked a little weird so I used the trusty fabric glue to gather and pin and glue the flounces down and added the yellow flowers to make it look intentional.

 

Without those flowers the fabric just hung there instead of making little pockets like you see here.

 

She was definitely excited about this one!
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