Easter dresses, part 1

Jenn was a real champ this time around and was very gracious about letting me take her picture in her seafoam Easter dress. Doesn't she look cute? I should have made her twirl in that full skirt...

Yep, I made her take to the field in heels. Nice sister, eh?

I used Butterick 6582, the same pattern I used for her "Mad Men" party dress and my Christmas dress (new dresses for every high mass!), though I used version C for the first time to create a full-skirted springy effect. This pattern has been getting some good use, being used three times in about six months! The full skirt was a bit unwieldy at times and it seemed to take forever to hem, but look at how it fluffs out...

So you can't see the skirt fluff out too much because she didn't want itchy legs. Can't blame her. However, I think this pose was used for Jenn's 8th grade graduation shots, too. Any word on that?

Naturally I used horsehair braid along the hem to give the skirt some life (like I even have a choice at this point in the game). Going into this dress project, I knew that both Jenn and her friend Sara had issues with this dress slipping off their shoulders at the Mad Men party (for which they both had someone make this dress for them) once the dress was made large enough to accommodate their busts. With that in mind, I made a pass at shortening the length of the neckline near the shoulder seam by folding the pattern to remove a triangle of space before I cut the fabric.

The parts shown in red are parts that I "removed" by folding the pattern over itself before I cut the fabric. And isn't my drawing awesome and totally to scale? I thought so. :) 

This seemed to keep the dress on Jenn's shoulders and I think I'll make the same alteration if I make it again for myself. It would probably also work to take the pattern down another size then do a full-bust adjustment, but I'm still avoiding those...
So this is the dress I finished Thursday night, then I started working on the next one which was ALSO long overdue...