Knit Dress with Embroidery

This dress has been in my head for a long time -- pretty much ever since I bought the fabric a year ago.

The story is, my daughter had a store-bought dress very similar to this one, but of course I knew it wouldn't fit forever. So I put her in it so much to squeeze in as many moments as I could before it would officially be too small. And now that it most definitely is, I realized it was about time to cut this beautiful striped knit fabric and get down to making a new dress, just like the other one.

I used Rae's Flashback Skinny Tee (size 5) for the bodice and improvised with the collar. I chose the shorter option on the pattern for the cuffs which turned out to be the right choice. And I did the suggested zig-zag stitch on the hem. Just for a point of reference, this is about the same size bodice I used for my son's Allosaurus Shirt (for his, I did add an extra half-inch all the way around the size 5).

What I love most about this dress is the embroidery. Doesn't it jazz thing up? And it was the easiest, quickest part too! The original dress had a very similar design and after everything was sewed up, I ironed on some interfacing to the inside of the bodice to give the knit some extra support, then pulled out my embroidery hoop and did some simple 6-strand stitches in a wavy line.

And I got the embroidery done while relaxing in front of a tv show. Love that part about embroidery. Low stress. As for my daughter, when I gave her the dress, the first thing her little fingers did was go straight for the buttons. Just fingering them a bit. It's so sweet watching her touch, admire, play with, and ultimately WEAR something I made her.

For the next time around, I'm going to work some more on my gathering. I sewed the seem below the gathering stitch, but just read on another blog that perhaps I should've sewn above my gathering stitch. I'll keep that in mind. I love how other blog posts can be so timely.

Have a good week!