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J loves every single Disney princess, she is obsessed. When she see's a princess unexpectedly (i.e. a cinderella balloon at the store, a princess shirt at Target) she will literally shriek with excitement. Snow White has been one of her favorites for a while. It's interesting to me that she likes it just as much, if not more, than the newer faster paced movies like Frozen. Anyway, at least once a day she'll break into song: "Someday my prince 'ill come". She likes to sing that line over and over. She asks me to dance with her during the sceen when Snow White dances with the 7 dwarves. Sometimes she'll pretend with her dad that he has the sleeping death and she'll wake him with true loves' kiss. Clearly, she needed a Snow White dress. It was a necessity really.
I have been working on this dress for over a week now and it's finally finished. J loves it, which is a good thing because I maybe spent more than double what I was planning. My husband said last night that this is going to be a dress J can hand down to her grandchildren, like an heirloom halloween costume. Do those even exist?
Because I spent so much at the fabric store I was determined to take my time with this dress. I made sure to line it properly and worked really hard on the fit. I wanted it to be big enough that Jane can play in it for 6 months to a year before it's too small.
The sleeves took me 2 hours each. I'm not even kidding. It was ridiculous. That red floral fabric was pretty stiff and it caused some issues with the blue satin. Plus I had to piece, pleat, and gather those suckers. I used the Craftiness is Not Optional tutorial which worked great.
I learned about this tip online. To gather stiffer fabrics that might break your gathering stitches, use cord and sew a zig zag stitch over the top. Be very careful not to catch the cord with your needle. It was a great way to gather those sleeves.
Here is the finished dress.
We took some pictures outside too. The white collar is removable which I love.
I used Simplicity 2817 for the collar and the sleeves. For everything else I used the Oliver + S Fairy Tale dress. The Simplicity pattern just didn't come close to fitting Jane right, so I pulled out my Oliver + S pattern made some slight adjustments and it turned out perfect.
The only changes I made to the Fairy Tale dress pattern were a pointed bodice, I lengthened and widened the arm holes, and lengthened the skirt by 4 inches so it would be proper princess dress length.
I added some eyelet lace to the lining of the skirt, because princesses have fancier linings, duh.
I can't wait to take J trick-or-treating this year. I think her mind will be blown when she finds out that strangers will give her candy while she gets to wear her Snow White dress. Halloween is so much fun with kids!
