My mother-in-law generously gave us some Christmas fabric earlier this last month and it was enough to make a dress or skirt for our No 2 daughter.

I had in mind what I wanted to make and thought that I would join a skirt pattern with a pinafore pattern for the top.

So I washed the fabric and went to find the pattern pieces and guess what, the skirt pattern was missing.  It was only one piece and I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Oh well, I still wanted to make it the same way so I sort of measured my daughters waist and added on a bit for ease and then cut out the skirt how I remembered it to be.  It is a circular skirt pattern cut on the fold.  It is a really nice pattern and so easy.

I then cut out the pinafore pattern and lifted the neckline on the front and dropped the back for the opening.  I  must admit I was really pleased that it all worked out so well.

The top fitted the skirt and I left the back seam open for buttons.  My daughter found three pretty old gold buttons to use as well.

I bound the neck seam with bias tape and then added a curved sort of flutter sleeve.

Some mistakes I made was that the armholes are a bit low, so she needs to wear a little t shirt underneath the dress, but you can’t really notice it.  I did cut the neck line a little large so next time I will bring it in a bit.

I found some nice white ribbon with gold hearts on it and sewed this over the waist seam to break up the fabric a bit.

No 2 daughter was thrilled with the dress, which made me so happy and it was lovely to see her wearing it on Christmas day.

Unfortunately after washing the dress the gold print on the ribbon came off, so I will need to replace it.  I’m going to get a plain gold ribbon this time so that nothing can wash off :-).