Belle - A Princess dress for Emily

Pattern: Butterick 4320

Fabric:  All stuff from my stash!  

-Yellow flowered leno shirting from fabric.com

-Yellow lace table cloth from Sharestuff (a thrift store) used for this dress too.

-Yellow criss-cross stitched cotton for bow left over from this dress years ago.

-miscellaneous yellow fabrics that I only had enough for one bow out of each.

-yellow lining or different kinds leftover from all sorts of things

-bodice lining from an old yellow tee shirt :-)

Emily says her favorite part is the shawl looking collar attachment.  I made this in 2 days on and off because Emily was actually very sick at the time and I was watching her and the house at the same time.  We were going to go to a friend's disney princess birthday party 5 days hence so I dug in my stash of fabric and scraps and whipped this up.  As it turned out she was still ill and could not go. :-(  But she got Belle dress out of it so she is pretty happy about that.  It is a little big on her now because of the weight she lost, but it'll fit right soon enough.

So it isn't exactly like Belle's from the movie but it is close enough. :-)

The bows are of different fabrics because of my scraps pile, but I kinda like it.

All of the bows are handsewn to the overskirt.  I did notice that they have you gather the back-most seam but don't have you make a bow for it.  I just un-gathered it because I didn't have any more scraps to make another bow out of. :-)

It is very full and she loves to spin. :-)

The Back

This dress was so simple to put together.  I would categorize it as easy.  The only hard part for me was putting in the invisible zipper and making sure everything was lined up right.  I don't know if the pattern even called for an invisible zipper though, I just like the way it looks...or doesn't look.

In this picture I still have to add a hook and eye.  The bodice is fitted with darts in the front and back which means you don't need to cut three pieces for the front and 4 for the back.  Which is nice.  Sewing for little people is so stress free. :-)  Except that they grow out of things...

With a couple petticoats under this it would get quite full. :-)

While Emily doesn't need another Belle costume for quite some time, if ever, I will definitely use the pattern again and modify it to make some more dresses in the future.

Curtsy!

Her new favorite necklace. :-)