Arden’s Rainbow Birthday Dress

We went to Jo-Ann’s and chose the colors.  Arden definitely had her opinions about which ones she wanted!

We did a little photo shoot on a bench in Arden’s bedroom.  Hadley kept trying to photo bomb the shoot so many of these are taken with her on my lap.

I used a basic bodice I’ve used previously and lengthened it into an a-line dress.  Then I sketched swooping lines for the different colors of the rainbow (including pink per Arden’s request!).  Then I traced those shapes onto another sheet with seam allowances added on.  you can see a center line and seam allowances in pencil that I added for the back pieces so I could insert a zipper.

I’ve made plenty of quilts, but never pieced something with curved seams.  I was pleasantly surprised with how well this worked out.  I’m planning to do a quickie tutorial on how I did the seams in this dress.  It would have been interesting to keep track of how many times I swapped out thread colors, as I matched the topstitching to the fabric throughout – even along the zip!

I even managed to get the seams aligned across the zipper – I love it when a project turns out better than you hope!

My little rainbow girl!  She called this her most special pose.  I have to agree!

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