Flower girls!

When my girls were in my brother's wedding, the bride requested off-white dresses with pink sashes (the bridesmaids were in black). I would have loved to design something from scratch, but I didn't want to find myself stressing for time at the eleventh hour. So I found a pattern I liked--princess seams and cap sleeves for an old-fashioned look--and decided I shouldn't try to make any big changes. I love old photos and fashion plates of Civil War-era children, with their stays and hoop skirts looking like a miniature version of mother. The great thing about designing for kids is that no matter how ridiculous the clothes are, they're going to look cute. 

Because I live out in Donkeyville with no good fabric stores close by, it was difficult to find a nice crisp taffeta fabric. This crepe-back satin was the best I could do with my resources (for this particular project I didn't want to order over the internet because it's just too difficult to judge weight, hand, and color of fabric without touching and seeing it in person). The result was that the dresses didn't have much pouf to them--particularly the size 5, because there was more heavy fabric to weigh it down. Still, they came out lovely. 

To make the design unique without changing the pattern, I used off-white lace ribbon to make a faux lace-up corset panel. This needs to be done before sewing the lining to the dress, so that the end of the lace will  be sewn inside for a clean finish. With 1/4" pink ribbon I formed a lacing pattern and pinned it in place. Then I sewed the lace ribbon down, catching each corner of the pink ribbon. The pink sash was the greatest find of all--no work on my part, I found it at Walmart, of all places. A perfect match, it was only about $5 for a spool of "sash ribbon."

You'll notice a tuck at the top of each sleeve--they ended up being super wide on my narrow girls, and the easiest solution, without big pattern changes, was just to pleat it inward and sew it flat. It made the sleeves a little puffy, but kids can get away with that. 

Voila! Unique flower girl dresses from a stock pattern. 

Later, we used the dresses for family photos.