My nieces’ dresses are finished!   DN1’s dress is on the right, DN2’s dress is on the left. Both are modeled by my daughters. You can read the details of  N1’s dress here, and I’ll share the details of N2’s dress in this post. 

Both girls wanted a purple sundress, and I was thrilled to find a lot of purple fabric at my local Fabricland this summer.  The bodice of this dress is a narrow width of pre-shirred fabric.  I was thinking of actually smocking the bodice by hand if I had to, but was very thankful to find a bolt of this shirring and a bolt of the matching cotton on the same table. And they were on sale – BOGO to boot!  I cut an appropriate length of fabric for the skirt, finished both raw edges with the serger, and stitched the top of the skirt just below the last row of elastic shirring. Here’s the inside and outside view.  You can see the top serged edge of the skirt against the elastic shirring of the bodice.

Once the skirt was attached, I stitched the one side seam using a French seam.  I had originally thought it could be the CB seam, but the seam itself was too noticeable, so I put it down the left side.  Then I cut a 7” wide ruffle (double the width of the skirt), finished both edges and stitched it to the bottom of the skirt.  It did look a bit plain, so I added a small sprinkling of glass beads along the stitching line for some interest.  I must say they don’t really show up that well because the ruffle is full, the top edge is rather deep, and they’re small.  But they’re there, so it’s not totally plain.  Let’s hope they like them!