A little vintage dress

Have you been following the Vintage May Series over at Skirt as Top and Craftiness is Not Optional? I was so excited when they ran the series last year and even more excited that they did it again this year! I love all things vintage. I really love the 1950's. My parents were little kids then and I love to look through their baby pictures. The style of clothing was just so cute for little kids and my grandmothers' dresses and coats were so pretty too. I even like the furniture and the look of the appliances. Growing up, I taught myself to read with my dad's first grade reader: The New We Come and Go. I wish I could find the book, I am sure it is at my parent's house somewhere. Here is a link to a copy for sale on etsy.com. I love the illustrations in this book. And the stories were so simple and easy to read for a little person. It was my favorite book when I was little.

My inspiration for Erin's little vintage dress came from my dad's book and also from this dress that Lindsay from The Cottage Home made for last year's Vintage May series. I just love this dress! The piping, the puff sleeves, the Peter Pan collar - swoon! I knew I needed to make a little dress like that for Erin and I even had some Denyse Schmidt fabric in my stash that had the perfect vintage vibe for such a dress. But, I never got around to it. I even had a great photo shoot in mind of Erin riding her tricycle down my parent's street - all the houses on their street were built in the 1940's plus I grew up in the same house my dad did - perfect "vintage" setting!

So this year when the announcement was made that the Vintage May series was happening, I grabbed my fabric, cut out my dress and got to sewing - the day before the series was ending of course! (procrastinator over here!) I did cut all my pieces out on Monday but I didn't have enough of the fabric I wanted for the lining so I sat on the project until today. Today I had the brilliant idea of only doing a facing in the dress so I didn't need as much of the fabric as with a full lining - genius! Ha!

I used The Cottage Mama's Janey Jumper pattern and the sleeve portion of the Addison Dress by Modkid. I also added a Peter Pan collar and red piping in the collar and between the sleeve and arm band. I used grosgrain ribbon for a tie closure instead of the button and loop closure the pattern suggests. The fabric is from the Picnic collection by DS Quilts for Joann (sadly they no longer have it). The dress is a size four with size five length. It fits perfectly and came out just the way I imagined - love when that happens! 

So while I didn't get to travel down to my parent's house for a tricycle photo shoot (its  Retro Red Radio Flyer Tricycle too), I had a vintage book on hand for Erin to sit and read in her new vintage dress :)

The Jolly Book for Boys and Girls (it was my grandmother's)

 

Mommy someone wrote their name in here!

grosgrain ribbon closure

something very sweet about this pic, i had to add it!

and this last pic is just me having fun with tints on pic monkey ;)

 

 



Thanks so much for stopping by!
Meghan