sew-vivor entry

This is my sew-vivor entry! This is my first sewing competition and I am excited to see what happens. This is a dress that I made for my daughter Kayla.  She has this gorgeous mermaid blond hair and big blue eyes, so these were the perfect colors for her!

  I had this image in my head of a really fluffy ruffle skirt and big covered buttons down the back.  In order to get some real fluff to it, I sewed two ruffles (one 1 inch longer than the other) to the each band.  It also allows you to see the fabric a little more on the outer ruffle of each set.  I love how the fabric covered buttons turned out.  And they are so easy to make. P.S. For those of you who grew up in the 80's it is just like making button pin, you know the ones we put all over our jean jackets!

On the front I wanted a corsage type flower so I cut up different sized heart shapes and tack them at each corner, layering them at random.  

Here is my other daughter Ashley in another version.  It is a skirt with tool ruffles under each fabric ruffle.  The short cut way to get this look is to finish the hem on both layers (or leave them raw if that is the look you are going for) and ruffle both layers at the same time.  

I set my tension  as loose as it will go on my serger and run both layers though.  Then you take the two short threads and pull them at the same time to get a nice even ruffle. Then I used a million pins to pin each ruffle to the bands.  Then sandwiched all the layers with the top or bottom of the next band and pinned it, then basted the whole sandwich on my sewing machine. Next I ran it through my serger to finishes it all off.