BurdaStyle Girl's Dress in Japanese Cotton

The happy recipient of a new dress:

The dress was made in secret as a birthday present so it couldn't be tried on along the way - so I'm pleased to see it does fit.  It's based on BurdaStyle 10/2010-151 in a 110cm height, also described as suiting an age of 6.

front view (hanger too wide)

back view - ties very hard to make out

I made a few small changes to the pattern (and just ignored the instructions):

• ties that do up in a bow at the back, in case the dress was a lot too wide

• full rather than 3/4 length sleeves - just the sleeves from blouse #151 in the same issue

• skirt lined in cotton voile 

• bodice faced in self-fabric for winter cosiness (instead of binding at the neckline)

oops not a very neat zip and the wrong colour of thread!

•  a button on the front - I had a button for each colour in the dress and was originally going to sew them in a line down the centre front bodice, but I simply ran out of time

This fabric was my daughter's selection.  I was planning to make her something using girly pink stash fabrics, but I just happened to pop into Tessuti Fabrics to buy some divine fake fur for wintery throws (seen as backdrop to some of the detail pictures above) and she became very quiet and basically glued herself to a bolt of fabric:-). Interesting!  It's a Japanese cotton print made by cosmo textiles.  I couldn't see it listed in Tessuti's online shop but they do have it in stock. It might actually be a quilting cotton...

Apart from finishing that dress I also had to make and ice cupcakes. I baked 120 mini vanilla cupcakes and iced 80 of them with butter cream and lollies for my dd's kindy and for a work morning tea.   

I thought icing and decorating would be fun for the kids, but it might just turn into a lolly-eating fest, given that here's how they decorated the chocolate birthday cake:

Next up I have to make a dress for a dinner function. I have to!  Grrrr... it's so much more fun to be carried away on a whim... Anyway, the fabric is very nice medium weight rose-coloured lace, and I'm thinking of keeping it as a very plain 3/4 sleeve sheath shape. I hope I can make myself do it!