Friday, August 29, 2014

Detachable Wings!


Short blog today, but with extra pictures!  Leading up to Grandma's 70'th birthday party, I've been sewing my heart out finishing grandma's present, and also finishing up Liz's new party dress.  This is the second variation I've done with this dress, and it all worked very well.  She wore it all day out of the house, and enjoyed using the pretend wings to amuse herself when all the grown-ups were gabbing.
 
 
The idea of this dress is to be usable as a regular dress, but also to be a play-pretend dragon dress.  My daughter wanted an ice/water dragon look.  So I colorblocked the front and added flounces at the armholes in leftover blue knit with silver sparkle.  I did't do a great job on the sleeve flounces, I've never made them before and was just going from directions on the internet.  I needed to make the spread wider, because there isn't a lot of flounce in these flounces.
 
I used a knit trim on the blue hem, and a ribbon trim on the white part of the dress. It's pretty subtle but if you look it's there.
 
Liz seems pretty happy overall with the dress. :D

 
 
Earlier this summer at Girl Scout Camp, we saw a girl wearing wings, and it gave Liz this idea.  I just had to figure out HOW to do it.
 
I ended up using buttons so the wings are detachable! (Thanks Arianna from Pattern Review for that idea!)
These will come off to easily wash the dress alone.  Also, it worked well to wear them all day, which she did in the car, at Grandma's house, and around the mall without any issues.
She's not smiling here, I think I wore her patience out for pictures when we were supposed to be on the way to a birthday party, lol.

 
The dress does have great twirl factor!  I love the handkerchief style hem, lots of shape and flare.

 I felt the back was a little boring, just white with a hint of blue from the bottom trim and the sleeve flounces.  I had a crazy idea about making diamonds down the back, but Liz asked it she could just have a strip of something like dragon spines.  I let her pick out the buttons at Jo-anns, which she loves to do.  They are opalescent half circle buttons, and I think look very pretty down the center back ribbon.  And look, white is terrible for kids, already she got something on it.  Sigh. Lol. Good think I made sure it would be easy to wash. :)


2 comments:

  1. This is so wonderful! Liz is growing like a weed.

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    1. Thanks Mary! She really is. Still one of the shorter kids in her class, but she grew more than 4 " in the last year, which means she needed new everything.

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