Holy Hula Girls, Batman!

So, I'm on a roll busting stash and making up little girl dresses. Here's the latest version of S3900 in a super cute Michael Miller Hula Girl Print:

I bought the hula fabric, the luscious pineapple yellow, and a hot pink Kona at Hancock Fabrics oh, at least three, maybe four years ago. I had planned to make a simple A-line top with capri pants using the hula print and the yellow with hot pink piping. Alas, I never got around to it. Story of my life.

So anyway, it suddenly hit me this past week. Why not just use it to make our go-to dress, S3900? It's a perfect combo! And I had just enough fabric to make it work! I totally planned to go through with the piping idea until I realized I had hot pink ric rack in my stash that matched perfectly. And the ric rack just kind of echoes the shapes of the flowers in the print- it's almost as if it was made to go with this fabric.

This dress is made pretty much like the Eiffel Tower dress, with ric rack inserted in the seams. For this version, I also used it on the armholes and bound the edges for contrast.


Here you can see the ric rack inserted into the seam at the hem, rather than applied onto the top. I was able to turn up the hem band to the inside and stitch it down by machine by topstitching "in the ditch" with pink thread on top of the ric rack. This made hemming a breeze.

I love the gorgeous yellow contrast fabric so much that I decided to go with a wider sash. I love the gathered effect at the front waist and the saucy bow in back. I simply used the existing pattern pieces and cut four instead of two. I sewed two pieces right sides together with a 3/8" seam and turned to make each sash. (On future versions I might add a little length to the sash.)

I appologize for the somewhat wrinkly dress in the photos. My iron died right as this project wrapped up (how's that for timing?) and I just couldn't wait until I got a new iron to share!

And here is a pic of M5615 with the addition of the wide leg capri pants from the same pattern:

I like this one much better now.

And the Season of the Dress- or should I call it the Season of the Stash- continues...