Catherine's first dress

Now Catherine has started Irish Dancing this year. I did it for about ten years, and decided I would like Catherine to learn. She has been having lessons for about a month now, and is not ready to compete, but the school is having it's own school competition and the beginners are allowed to get some stage time, and just basically do what they want, skip, hop, whatever, to get some experience being up there.

Of coarse I decided I wanted to make her a dress... in 3 weeks.

Now here is an example of an Irish Dancing dress....

which is currently for sale for 500 pounds here

That's like $1000 NZ dollars! and that's for some of the cheaper ones!

Now, in three weeks, you can guess it's going to be nowhere as flash as this one... but she's just a beginner, who can't even spring 23 yet...

so long story short... here's what I've got so far.

The pattern. I've tried to draft a pattern from scratch.

It's taken about 4 attempts to get this far.

I've been sewing in scrap poplin, hence the colours. The sleeves are different here. I couldn't get them right. I decided for puffed sleeves. I realised I needed to bring in the armholes alot more so the puff would have more effect.

I finally mastered the puff. Now I'm onto the skirt. The ruffles are just pinned on here. The ruffles will go all the way down. The colours will be black and turquoise. I'll take some more photos once it's done and shes wearing it. Looks a bit funny on the hanger.  Although all the modern dresses looked pretty hideous to me at first anyway, I'm getting used to them.

I keep wanting to be more and more adventurous, but since I have 2 weeks to go, I'm trying to calm my impulses down, and stay simple for now.