Tiny Tinkerbell

Today is the day for the letter T! My daughter wants a Tinkerbell party this year, and I'm making her a dress for the party! And one for a friend - so two dresses! These aren't finished yet, missing hems and zippers. Soon...

 Going through my pattern stash, I found these two patterns - decided to follow the one on the right, Simplicity 2237, but getting ideas for a jagged edge skirt from the one on the left.

Here's my sketch (with paint! couldn't find markers and colored pencils didn't get the idea right) with the jagged edge skirt idea.

 When I got out the paper and fabric, I thought I would just cut the points as I felt, then realized no, that's not a good way to do that - measured, planned!

It helped I was watching Project Runway while I did this! Here you see the skirt folded in quarters, with a point on I cut to fit it. Then I used it for a template to draw four points to edge the skirt with.

 Draw...

 Cut...

 Attach to pattern!

And ready to cut the fabric with it! Downside... this actually made the skirts quite a bit longer. More on that later in the post.

 Here's a bit on the rest of the dress...

 The front of the halter bodices - the straps could be longer. This is a step of the sewing where I'm making them fully lined, it worked well!

 These are the backs of the bodices, before adding elastic in to make them stretchy.

 Skirts sewn together! I forgot to make the white underskirt longer, but since I have to shorten the whole skirt, I won't shorten the white as much as I shorten the green.

 Sewing on the dining table... I miss my basement! But it was fun sewing while my husband worked on computer stuff, we were in the same room talking!

 This is what the halter tops looked like, before sewing onto the skirt. Aren't they all cute and symmetrical?

 Almost finished dresses!

The back of one on the left, the front of one on the right.

 And here's my Tiny Tinkerbell, trying on her dress!

She was making funny faces in it, silly girl! I'm taking at least 3 or 4 inches off the green part of the skirt, it's a light summer dress, not a long one! I'm trying to decide on any embellishments or a ribbon belt... haven't decided yet.

Overall I would say the pattern has worked pretty well, except the halter straps would be nicer about 4 inches or more longer, for easier tying. Making the halter bodice took some re-reading of directions, but then I got it. I almost think the dresses don't need zippers, since they're for four year olds, but I will still put them in. Looking forward to trying to make another halter dress sometime! I have fun finding new things to learn on my daughter's dresses, costumes or not. I tackled darts on the Cinderella dress, pleats on another of her birthday dresses, now halter!

Now I just have to do the trimming, add in the zippers and hem those fun jagged edges somehow! Wish me luck, parties on Saturday and Sunday, and we're doing a lot on Friday out of the house...

And I still need to plan the party! Thinking about making paper fairy/bird houses for the girls to decorate with stickers and markers, maybe like this one I made tonight. What do you think?

Who is your favorite fairy from stories? Share in the comments! And please join me tomorrow for something that starts with U!