A Fairly Well Known Sun Dress

You have seen this dress before, oh yes you have, on a certian Girl Of The Year 2009. These directions are handy if you missed out on this sun dress, or possibly if you're just gunning for warm weather clothing for your dolls.

Also, take note -- if you're making it yourself instead of buying the thing, you can make it however you like. Longer, shorter, different color, different stuff on the trim, whatever. You'll wind up liking your version better.

You'll need:

Cloth -- I'm going to reccomend quilting cotton.
Something To Trim The Thing With -- Bias tape, ribbon, whatever.
Sewing supplies -- Thread, needle, scissors, machine if you want it.

Step one is going to be to copy your bodice pattern to something, somewhere (I prefer notebook paper for such endevors), and take the shoulder straps off of it. You wind up with this nonsense:

Cut one bodice and two sides (which are just going to look like long rectangles that match up to the bodice). The original dress had a gathered skirt, so I'm going to reccomend you go ahead and cut a long rectangle for the gathered skirt, like like you would in any gathered skirt. However, you could, if you were crafty, get away with any sort of skirt on the bottom, to include pleated or a line.

You'll notice in that photo that I also have my trim prepared (I used ribbon ironed in half out of sheer laziness, you could use bias tape if you were feeling it), and an extra green ribbon. That green ribbon is going on the skirt hem. Keep reading, you'll see.

Hem the top of the bodice. No, really. Now, sew the sides to said bodice.

Take that trim you have and, starting at the end of one of the ends, run that trim all the way up along the side and past the bodice hem. Hey! Listen! LEAVE A LONG TAIL OF TRIM HANGING OFF THE BODICE. Don't cut it! That's eventually going to be the piece that ties around your doll's neck to make a halter top!

Do that to both sides.

Set the bodice aside for a moment. You could hem the skirt, but in the original dress, it had an extra block of color at the hem line. I used ribbon because the texture's cool and because it was one less hem to do. If you use cloth, for God's sake, hem it first! Sew the piece to the long bottom edge of the skirt, right sides together.

Now, gather the skirt and sew it to the bodice, again, right sides together. Add yourself some velcro. You're done!

The trim that we left on the bodice ties around your doll's neck. The original had it velcroed around a doll's neck. If you want to go through and measure and sew that velcro in, go nuts. I'd rather just tie it and forget it.

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