March 18, 2013
Easter is only 2 Sundays away, Yikes… that snuck up on us!
Here is a cute little easy Easter dress for a baby girl, you just need simple supplies:
2 Fat quarters , or half yard of fabric
Elastic Thread, white or black depending on your fabric
4 buttons
Sewing machine, scissors, thread and a ruler
(it can be altered to make it for a girl of any age just use 1 or 2 yards of fabric instead of 1/2)
First, Cut off the salvage edges and if you are using a 1/2″ yard of fabric, cut it in half so you have 2 fat quarters.
Now Take both of your fat quarters and with right sides up measure 2″ inches in on the width of the fabric and cut, these will be the straps of the dress.
Now you will have 4 pieces of fabric that should look like this:
Set aside your strap pieces for now, we will revisit those later. Now your will take the two other pieces and fold them in half with both of them together width wise, a hamburger… not a hotdog fold if that helps.
Now on one edge opposite where the fold is measure in 3″, we are making the slope on the side of the dress.
Mark your 3″ mark and use a straight edge to slop the line from your 3″ mark to the other side of your fabric like so:
Now cut through all of your layers to make the slope
Now you should have two identical pieces that look like this:
Now we are going to prepare to do out sheering, which you shouldn’t be afraid of.. it’s ridiculously easy. The most annoying thing about sheering is that you have to hand wind the elastic thread on the bobbin. You don’t want to stretch the thread too much but you also don’t want it flopping on the bobbin, so use you best judgement on how tight you are winding it. it will look like this:
Now just load the bobbing into your machine as you would a normal bobbin, my machine has a top loading bobbin but most machines should have no problem with elastic thread. Also don’t be afraid to consult your machine manual if you are having problems, most machine manuals have a section about sheering. Okay, now we are going to mark on our fabric where our sheering lines will go. I did six lines of sheering on my dress, you can choose to do more or less it depends on the look you desire. 
I also stitched down the top hem of the dress, but I then go over this stitch with my shirring, I kind of use it as a guideline to keep my stitches straight.
Then go ahead and go for it and stitch your shirring in. Make sure you stretch your fabric out as you go and the machine will do the rest.
Always stitch with your fabric face up, because you want the elastic on the back and that’s where your bobbin thread will go. Repeat the shirring on both the front and back pieces of your dress, trim all your threads, attach the front to the back and we will then move on the the hem. 
Now you can cut your dress to the desired length, it helps is you make it slightly curved so that you dress will lay better on the body. 
Now fold your hem, press and sew:
Now for the straps! Yay! almost done
Take out your strap pieces and fold them in half with the wrong side of the fabric facing out, Turn them right side out Then sew and press with the seam in the middle.
Now measure the length you will need your straps, you can eye ball this or if you have the actual child handy you can measure from them. Cut the excess off.
Now fold the ends of the straps in and under and top stitch all around the strap.
Now we can add our button holes. I’m lucky enough to have a machine does a one step button hole, but you can read your manual to see how your machine does a button hole or you can op out of the button hole step and just sew the buttons and straps directly to the dress, you wont be able to change the straps from straight to cross or vice verse but you can still get the cute button hole effect.
Repeat the button holes on all 4 ends of the straps and then sew the buttons on the top of your dress. Attach the straps to the buttons and TA DA! Cute little Easter dress!!
Enjoy, Happy Easter and Happy Sewing Everyone!!
Posted by hartsblog in Tutorials Tags: Baby, buttons, clothing, Cute, DIY, Easter Dress, Easy Sewing, Easy Sewing Projects, fabric, Fashion, Fat Quarter, gift ideas, handmade gifts, holiday crafts, sewing
Once we’ve done that we will fold down the tops of our pocket panels to create the pocketing for our straps. The diagram picture in Step 24, was a little funny to me, the V-shaped line of one of the creases didn’t really seem to make any sense, so I did what was written and what did make sense, and just fold down the tops, as you can see below. And then I pinned.
