Cuppycake Dress

I made this dress using the Pink Fig Cuppycake Dress pattern. It's such a fun, cute, summer dress. I love the Amy Butler fabric I chose, thanks to Glenna's help. Seriously folks, go visit her shop on the web and buy some great fabric and patterns for great prices.

Back to the dress - I have used one of Pink Fig's patterns before and loved it, but I had a few issues with this one. First off, I think using 16 strips of fabric for the skirt was way too much for my 3 year old. Below is a picture of me in the middle of the skirt before it was gathered to give you an idea. I am in the process of making another one of these dresses and I will probably only use 10 strips. Lucky for me, my fantabulous mother gave the the tip doing a zigzag stitch over some cord to draw it up. There is no way I could have gathered it my usual way without my thread breaking. On second thought - this is so cute on Little Bit and she does love the fullness of the skirt. Maybe if I would've done a lighter fabric it would've been better.



Issue two - there was a little piece of paper stuck in with the pattern that said the bodice piece would not line up with the back piece. To fix it, I needed to cut off 1/2 an inch from the front bodice piece. No big whoop, right? Well when I went to sew it on the back bodice piece, the front piece was 1/2 an inch too short! Maybe I had a newer copy of the pattern that had already been corrected? So, it was really no big deal; just that the bodice was 1/2 an inch shorter than it should have been.

Last issue - the back bodice piece was shirred. The last row of shirring was supposed to be about an 1/2 inch from the bottom of the bodice piece, which I did. But if you remember, my back bodice piece is now 1/2 an inch longer than my front, therefore making my last shirring row at the very bottom of the bodice. I'm not sure if that made a difference or not. (Have I totally lost you, yet, with my rambling?) When I went to sew the mammoth skirt onto the bodice I got to thinking - am I supposed to stretch the shirred bodice piece out while I sew this on? If I don't - the shirred part won't stretch anymore, right? I wondered if I would be able to fit it over her head if it wouldn't stretch. The directions said nothing about it, so I decided to stretch the back bodice piece while sewing the skirt on. I think I might have made a mistake on that, because now the shirred piece is stretched out for good.



Now for the good - this is SUCH a cute dress! I'm going to make one for Red and I've learned a few things. Cut down the size of the skirt, don't cut the front bodice down by 1/2 an inch, and try it this time without stretching the shirred piece.



It passes the swirl test and got several "ohs" and "ahs" from the ladies at church last night, which is always .... a good thing.