A Treasured Hour of Sewing...

Doing what you love isn't a privilege;

it's an obligation.

~ Barbara Sher

Probably a month ago I had everything done on these dresses except the center back seam.  I finally squeezed in a few minutes over the holiday weekend to finish them up.  (Man, did it feel great!) 

I couldn’t quite make sense of the instructions, so I decided to “go commando” and throw them out.  Here you can see one of the dresses, with the 2 back pieces laid right sides together and the upper facing on your left.  

I started by stitching the center back seam from the hem (lower edge) up to the bottom of the facing.  Then I pressed that seam open – here is the result: 

Next I turned the dress right-side out and folded the facing over so that the wrong side was exposed:  

I stitched this from the bottom of the facing to the top of the dress – I tried to line up my stitches so that they started right at the point where the back center seam ended:  

I trimmed the corner and flipped the facing back to the inside – here you can see how nicely it lines up with the center back seam on the outside:  

And on the inside:  

Before I repeated that step on the other side, I lifted the facing and added my label, so that the stitches wouldn’t show on the outside of the dress:  

Now it was time to repeat the previous steps on the other side.  This time I slid an elastic hair band into the other side – to be the button-loop – before I stitched it.  If you try this, remember that it’s the part that you can’t see at this stage that becomes the part you do see when it’s complete!  (VOE*)  ;)

Again, trim the corner before flipping right-side out:  

A nice thing about those elastic hair bands is that they come in all different colors.  

Voila!  Three adorable A-Line dresses for 3 adorable little girls!  

It was so nice to get in some sewing time!  :)

I hope you had a good sewing weekend!  :)

* VOE = Voice of Experience