Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Cowgirl Dress-up


For Rodeo Day at preschool, K* informed me that she needed cowgirl clothes. So I thought about it and remembered that I had a costume pattern, Simplicity 3680, that I bought a few years ago because of the cute cowgirl on it. A quick trip to the fabric store for the supplies we needed and I got started. Other than the first illustration being wrong, which then meant at step 7 or 8 I had to totally unpick the sleeves and start all over, it went together pretty easily. I cut it out on Monday and did all the sewing on Wednesday (ended up taking longer than it should have though due to the pattern error). I hadn't used bias tape for elastic casings yet and really like how easy that was, wouldn't mind doing that kind of a casing again. I used moleskin for the brown fabric and wasn't a fan of sewing with it. For future projects, I'll just use a regular brown cotton. I really like the little blue floral print fabric (cute small floral-aqua from Jo-Ann's), bought the last 2 yards, hope they get more in. They also didn't have enough of the loop fringe, so I only put it on the brown layer. Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out and looks, in the future I may just stick to a skirt with a simialr look to this dress' skirt and a white shirt if she wants to dress up for school again.

3 comments:

Donna said...

Oh my goodness....I am trying to make this pattern right now and am stuck with sewing the sleeves to the bodice. I'm new to this and quite frustrated. Do you happen to remember what part of the pattern was wrong? It told me to sew the sleeves along the under arm and then sew the bodice on the sides. After that I'm supposed to pin the sleeves to the bodice and I just can't understand how it's going to work.

knuttmeg4 said...

Donna, I'm sorry I don't remember what was wrong, I think it was the illustration that threw me off. I hope you got/get it figured out. Sounds like you're on the right track from your comment. I'll let you know if I remember anything.

Donna said...

Thank you for replying! I figured it out. The instructions never tell you to put casing and elastic on the bottom of the sleeve only the top. So if you don't catch it, you'll have this cute dress with unfinished sleeves. :)