NL 6219 - Orange & navy toddler sailboat dress

Now that Rachel has grown big enough for the toddler patterns, I am having lots of fun making her some clothes. At first I had a hard time finding fabrics that I like. The quilting cottons at my local fabric stores aren't very good quality and wrinkle quickly - not what you want for little girls' clothing. However, I have recently discovered the coordinating quilting fabrics at fabric.com, which are the perfect weight for clothing and hold up really well to lots of activity. 

This little dress is from NewLook 6219, a pattern I bought for the ruffled dress over ruffled pants outfit featured on the envelope. I cut the size 1/2 for the width and "sleeves" and the size 1 for length. Rachel is almost 3 but very petite. The bodice has a downward curve at the front waist seam that I cut off and made straight. I also put the side seams on the actual sides and not the side front. (This pattern has those side front seams because of the ruffled version.)

The belt was originally really tall and drafted way too short to reach around the waist. Luckily I had enough fabric to recut a longer one. I added navy piping to the belt and sleeves - the white belt directly on top of the orange bodice just didn't look quite right to my eye. I used big navy ric rac along the bottom.

Rachel has come a long way since I took these pictures of her, and will actually take some direction now. I said, "Hold on the railing so mama can get a picture of the back" and she actually did it! The back neckline is so cute on this dress. I couldn't find the right color of orange-red for the zipper so I used white. It could have been special ordered from NYC but I was ready to make this and didn't want to wait.

The only thing I will change next time is to move the sleeve in a bit. The bodice bunches outward when she moves around and I can see down the front.

I matched the center back seams for fun. The insides were finished with my overlocking foot (no pictures, sorry.) I used navy thread on top and white thread in the bobbin when I stitched on the ric rac.

This was a really fun dress to make! I wanted her to have a new dress for July 4th but we went to Lake LBJ for the extended weekend and ended up not taking it. Here are some shots of our trip:

You can just see me sitting at the table. This is the only picture I made it into!

That's my niece on the left. She and Daniel are inseparable when they're together.

Now I'm off to do a mountain of laundry and a ton of unpacking...