C's Christmas dress

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Ready for some chubby legged (and cheeked) Charlotte goodness? OH, and her Christmas dress. Yes, I got it done, and although it's fairly simple, I love how it turned out! I really wanted to use red fabric this year, since I'd done green all the other years. (all 2 of them har har)

I went with a simple bodice and embellished it with some big circle flowers!  I also ruffled the skirt piece and sewed it on top of the bodice bottom. I'll show ya how I did those two parts below...for the rest of the dress construction, I basically used the Charlotte dress tutorial!

I haven't decided if I'll make her anything for her hair, lately she's been pulling things out in 5 seconds flat anyways. Maybe I should try some duct tape...

Ahhh this picture is too cute! I'm sorry, but those cheekies? man alive.

Alright, so anyways....here's how I did the circle flowers and skirt!

Oh, and the red fabric is Ruby by Bonnie and Camille for Moda, from my fab sponsor, Lily Bella Fabrics...and the green is from Hancock Fabrics...no manufacturer on the selvage.

I cut out lots and lots of 2" circles. (with my Go Baby...I adore that thing!)

Then, just like the felt version, I folded the circles in quarters.

Then I tacked down just the tip of the folded circle to the center of another circle. (I used my machine but you could hand sew them if you want to watch a movie or are an over achiever or something)

Keep doing that, overlapping the folded circles a bit. I used 6 folded circles on each bottom layer of "petals".

It made a nice fullness. (is that sentence even grammatically correct? Let's move on...)

Then I tacked down another folded circle on top of that layer, and also one across from that one. Fluffed it up, and it looked great! You could add as many as you wanted for maximum fluffiness.

Then I sewed each flower to the bodice by sewing along the edge of the bottom circle.

Tip: If you want 5 flowers like Charlotte's dress, sew them on after sewing sleeves on, that way you won't catch any of the petals in that seam.

For the skirt, I cut a piece 13"x 54" (for a 18-24 mo size) It's folded in half for this picture. Then I serged the top and bottom of the piece.

Then fold the top down about an inch and pressed it with my iron.

Then I sewed two gathering stitches across the top of the skirt piece.

Then I gathered the skirt to fit the bottom of the bodice. I gathered the bottom string a little more than the top, this made it look nice because the top part didn't flop around so much.

Then I top stiched it on the bodice, along the bottom stitch line. Insert your invisible zipper, hem it up, and you're done!