The fabric came pre-smocked, and I love the print and length. Most of the time this style of fabric comes too short for much more than toddlers, but this is longer at 26" wide, long enough even for older girls once you add straps. Calf length of a 5 year old.
I didn't have enough fabric to make the straps for 2 kids dresses. I vaguely remember braided ric rack someplace, and google phoo re-educated me. It's two strips of ric rack, and you can do stripes when you use two colors.
Great for kid's wear. Below is the process, you wind two pieces of ric rack it so each of notch hits each notch. Even hubby got in on this one. And he was better than me.
Do check widths before buying - I bought "baby" in the same colors as well, but even with the same label they were slightly different widths/wave lengths and so wouldn't mix.
Pinterest lies in that intense, methodical ironing with as much tension as possible is required to make it stay pretty, and even then it wiggles some. The trim calls out to be applied to some surface, not straps. It is incredibly malleable and can go around corners like nothing. Next even to soutache, but without the tugging.
I sewed down the middle of the trim to making it more wearable for washable kid's wear, which hopefully will work. The straps were doubled up for visual interest and crisscrossed in the back, interwoven. I sewed them down twice, above and below the first two lines of gather stitches using a flexible machine stich. They are solid and won't tug the gathering oddly. The back has some extra trim, for growth.
Cutting the gathered/smocked fabric can be simple - measure the top, cut the gathered part, then tear to the allowance. It is waaaaay too difficult to eyeball a straight seam with the gathers. Tearing ensures you've a straight gain from your last cut.
On M's I may do two side seams instead of one, so I can gore the skirt seam to give it a bit more of a bell shape. But matching the fabric on the design is cool, which I can't doo with a bell shape.
Dress itself took me less than two hours. All of one seam, French seamed with the gathering partly picked out to reduce bulk. If I'd been paying attention, I'd have matched the fabric at the side seam, which you can kinda see on the left.I folded down arm holes, cut the extra, zig sagged the edge and stitched them down. The back is slightly wider than the front. Here's the finished dress:
And yes, that is M's feet and my feet.
Because I'm me, I did a narrow hem and applied ric rack peeking out. Love the scallop treatment it gave. I ironed my hem location to mark it then pinned the ric rack down, sewing it in place on the underside of the hem. When I flipped the hem allowance under, this let me tweak the final placement subtly before I sewed things. I used a straight stich with movable foot mark the hem width, so there was very little futzing. Much easier than my initial plan to apply the ric rack manually after I finished hemming.
I will make a ric rack flower for the waist on M's dress. She asked for something fancier (Superpowers, to be exact) so I must oblige.
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