Simple + 10

Is there anything more fun than little girl dresses? This dress is for my younger dd. She picked the fabric from the $1.99 table at Ikea, which is also where we got the fabric for her sister’s dress. The poppies are extremely large, and I wanted to keep them as intact as possible without having her look like she is wearing a sheet. I found some fabric in a very similar red left over from another project. This links to my other blog, which I no longer update. I used the red fabric for the details.

The pattern came from the Japanese book Simple + One. Of course, I tarted it up to the point where it’s more like Simple + ten. I slashed the front pattern piece to add a ruffle, appliqued a flower on the front that is similar to the poppy on the skirt, and appliqued a belt piece. The skirt is a full circle, which allowed me to keep the huge poppies on the fabric mostly intact.

Detail of my applique, ruffle, and bias binding.

Back View

Simple + One, the book that the basic pattern came from.

In other news, I put blackout liners on the roman shades in dd’s room! It probably took me 3 hours total to put blackout liners on both east-facing shades. In the 7 years since her birth, I have probably spent 100 hours at 5 or 6 in the morning when she was awake too early wishing that the blackout liner fairy would show up and add light-blocking properties to her shades. The crisis finally reached a proportion to make me overcome my dislike of home dec sewing. I am certain that when the sun starts rising earlier, I will be experiencing the utter bliss of my child sleeping until 7 or so.

I bought the blackout fabric from Walmart.com. I bought a blackout curtain in a very large size and cut it to line both shades. I actually have enough left over to line the third shade in her room, but since that window does not face east, that will probably never happen.

East-facing shades that I lined. You only get the light coming in at the edges.

South-facing shade that I did not line.

Here’s my gallery of Ikea fabric dresses:

One of last year's Ikea print dresses. Click on the pic for the blog post about it.

The other of last year's dresses. Click on the photo for more info on this dress.

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