The Wonderland dress

Today I bring you the wonderland dress...

Picture from Disney

Which you may think was inspired by this dress worn by Alice, but it's not although it could be.

Picture from Nick Jr.
It was actually inspired by this show. Ni Hao Kai Lan, which my son for some reason or another calls wonderland. See those funky dandelions? That is how the dress was born. I followed the tutorial for the fall into fall dress found HERE
and then added some grass and dandelion details.

I started by taking the front piece of the dress and sketching on some grass with the occasional stem popping up. You can do this with a fabric pencil, which I would recommend but I couldn't find mine and so I used a pen, which is also fine.

Then I took green floss (the needlepoint kind not the dental kind) and I stitched along the drawing. This takes a little while, so I just turned on an episode of project runway and made a date with my needle and thread, it is a nice little night time project.

Then you have that done. If you are really ambitious you could fill it all in, but well I like the outline.

Then I took some little shiny beads found in the jewelry department of any craft store (or Walmart even)

I cut some different size circles out of tulle, stacked them up and placed them at the top of the stems

Then I sewed some of the beads down over the circles connecting them to the dress front.

Then I continued on the tutorial again found HERE
I made a few changes to the original as described below...

With this dress it shows the pleats better since the fabric has more weight to it, it has a more structured look. Also I did not line the whole dress this time I only lined the sleeves. Cutting both sleeve pieces the same size instead of two sizes as I did in the previous dress. Lastly instead of a bow at the neck I made a simple belt out of some white bias tape and I used a loop of elastic sewn at one end and a button at the other for the elastic to loop around.

Ok the last change I made was I wanted buttons instead of a zipper in this one (I liked the whimsy of the buttons) So instead of making the back two pieces I only cut one on the fold as I did for the front. Then I cut a slit a few inches down the middle back and added a flap with button holes on it and then sewed the buttons to the other side and there you have it. A different look with the same basic pattern. Let me know if you want a more detailed tutorial on any of those changes. It kind of seemed like a lot. 

Your little one has a perfectly sweet garden party dress, or a moving into the fall but I won't forget the pretty spring dress

Enjoy!