the land of make-believe

join me, won’t you? we’re going to pretend the sun is shining, bees are buzzing, and it’s a balmy 77 degrees outside. you know what? make that 81. yeah, that should work.

we’ll ignore the dirty snow mounds that will probably not be gone until june. we’ll ignore the hum of the oil heater as it burns away our almost-$4-a-gallon oil O.o and we’ll most certainly ignore the velour pants and oversized sweatshirts we’ve been living in for the last few months.

let’s wear something a little more like this…

these dresses were photographed back in our giant photo shoot, and the pics have just been waiting patiently on my computer for the blog post to accompany them. and i’m actually kind of glad that i’m such a lazy procrastinator, because now we get to have a little sunshine-y summer type post instead of the winter dress i was going to write about. yay for delaying things!

so these dresses were based around that bottom layer of fabric—the french city scene. if you know me at all then it should come as no surprise that  it had me at hello, but it’s pretty busy and pretty pricey and i limited myself to just a little bit of it.

by pairing it with the polka dot and the solid pinks i could make two SUPER FLUFFY and SUPER TWIRLY dresses that coordinate for my littlest girlies.
because we can all agree that it’s all about the fluff and the twirl, right?

the front bodice is simple—i sewed a little pleat in the center, then added that strap to the middle. it goes around the back and down the front, sewn in to the bodice and skirt seam on front and back. so the pleat is doing some of the work of shaping the bodice into a sweetheart, and the little strap is doing the rest. and of course i gave these dresses my beloved spaghetti straps.

come to think of it, this dress is really just an amalgamation (word of the day) of things i love: fluffy, twirly dresses on little girls, with sweetheart necklines and spaghetti straps, a nod to paris, invisible zippers and piped hems. swoon. oh, and not ironing, as obvious from the above shot.

the dresses are completely lined with a separate, equally fluffy and full layer with a piped hem. and between the two layers and piping that’s enough to give the dresses their fluffy factor without any itchy tulle or slips. which makes them super easy to wear.

so that’s it. two little summer dresses to maybe get us through our dreary winter day. think of me as the punksatawny phil of the sewing world—i definitely see my shadow, so 6 more weeks to spring dresses. better get crackin’.

i can just see us now…the skies will be blue, and you guys’ll be there too. when we finally do what frozen things do in SUMMERRRRR!