Hippity Hoppity Easter's On Its Way!

As of nine o'clock this morning this is what Kellen's dress looked like on my sewing table.  By noon, the bodice was finished.  Notice that I decided to put a pearl at each intersection of the woven ribbon.  That took ALOT of time, but I think it was worth it.  Then I decided to make ribbon embroidered flowers on the collar.  I happened to have the solid lavender, lilac, or whatever color you would call this, in my stash.  I decided to make the sleeves with pleats rather than gathers.  Then I thought the green ribbon would finish the look of the sleeves.

I really like the look of the pleats on the bottom of the bodice as it shows on the pattern that I used (blue version).  But, with the woven ribbon and pearls that obviously wouldn't work so I made a pleated sash instead.  Just the front is pleated, of course.

Since Kellen doesn't like hair bows, I made her a head band instead.
For the skirt, First I measured how long the finished skirt needed to be, and then I went ahead and hemmed the floral fabric before attaching it to the bodice.  Then I hemmed the lining an inch and a half shorter.  I took Gwen's   advice and used my machine's decorative stitches to hem the lining.  I used dark green and made a row of a leaf design, then I went over it with the lavender with a flower design. I layered the skirt with the lining, a layer of netting with ribbon sewn along its edge, then the floral.  Once it was all together it didn't have the fullness I was after so I gathered a 6 inch wide strip of the netting that was three times the width of the skirt and sewed it to the netting on the outside between the netting and the floral fabric.  This gave it just a little more fullness.  It looks a little cockeyed in this photo, but it really isn't.

Here's the finished dress with front and back views.

Sister dresses.  I've got to get them in the mail so they'll have them in time for the Easter Bunny!

More dresses that I need to mail back to my DD so her girls can be wearing them.  These are previous years' Easter dresses that I borrowed.  Our Area Arts Council has a wearable art fashion show each fall and my things have been featured in it the past two years.  These are the dresses that some little models wore.