So, time has flown and it’s February already! Having been quietly confident on 8th January that I would be turning out 3-4 projects per month, here we are and I’ve only just finished the second… But never mind, I am still squarely within resolution and hopefully I’ll speed up!

Project number 2 is a dress for Evelyn, the daughter of a very dear schoolfriend. Evelyn is the happy niece of several real aunts. However this has not prevented those close to her mum from self-nominating as honorary aunts. I am one such pretender. In my defence if you saw those cheeks, and that smile – you’d be an instant aunty too. It was Evelyn who inspired the apron project I mentioned in my first post – the image of a mum/daughter set was too much to resist – and when I saw this fabric on Leicester market, I knew her birthday present had to be a summery dress.

(yes yes I know it’s winter… but look at the butterflies!!)

One of the many excellent perks of being the grand-daughter of a fantastic seamstress is having access to her wide (and frighteningly well-organised) range of patterns from the last 60+ years. Sure enough, 3 days after mentioning the summerdress idea, I received a pattern in the post:

Brilliant right? I mean RET-RO Brilliant.

On a side note – see how neatly the pattern pieces are stacked? Granny always folds up her used pattern pieces meticulously, numbers on the outside, so that they can be easily used again – such a professional!

Anyhoo, the little pink dress (girl on the right) was almost perfectly what I had in mind, and with a couple of tweaks I came up with this:

It’s really hard to judge size when your model is miles away (and growing at a rate of knots), so I erred on the side of too big and added a sash so that it could be pulled in…

AND so that there could be a bow at the back. Because what girl doesn’t love a dress with a bow?

Happy Birthday Evelyn!! xxx