Let's Go Fly a Kite

It was over a year ago that I pinned the "Let's Go Fly a Kite" Sundress to my Pinterest boards. That, as you may have noticed, was before Rosa was even born. And since that time, I've been waiting for the opportune moment to have a go at this dress for myself! 

So many things to love about this design -- the curved bodice, the contrasting fabrics, the hem band. It's sweet and simple, but a bit more than your average sundress.

I stuck with the tutorial for the most part, save for omitting the gathers in the front, adding buttons down the back, and adding a panel in the side seam (my new favorite way to add wearing ease to a baby dress that doesn't have pleats or gathers). The side panel ended up a bit smaller than I intended, due to a calculation error, but it still does its job quite nicely. You can just see it in the bottom left corner of the picture above.

A little look at the inside -- this is the side panel

I took my time with this dress, as I had only half a yard of each fabric. French seams on the inside, with both bodice and hem band lined for a clean finish.

The fabric, by the way, is the same used for my cathedral window pincushion: Mimosa in robin's egg blue and Cotton Puffs in candy apple red from the Avalon collection by Moda.

After whipstitching the hem band lining, I realized that somehow the left side was
1/4" longer than the right! *sigh* Fortunately, it was easy enough to go back and
fix the error!

Vintage buttons all down the back -- I'm so nervous about buttonholes, but there was really no other way to go with this dress. Serendipitously, they're some of the best buttonholes I've done.

I didn't intend to gather the shoulder straps, but when I tried the dress on little Rosa, I quickly realized that she wouldn't be able to wear the dress until next year unless I made some modifications. A quick casing job (not the criminal kind!) and two pieces of elastic solved the problem. It's roomy on her, but it fits well enough -- and I can remove the elastic next year so she can wear it again!

A bit of ribbon detailing topped off this project. Now that I've got the design figured out, there will certainly be more of these in Rosa's future!