A little dress with a big ruffle

A little dress with a big ruffle

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• 10.04.2010

Well, it's not really a ruffle.  But, I've been seeing so many of these fun dresses (love the natural waist!) with big ruffle-like collars... they're actually bias spirals sewn on without any gathering.  See?
From ModCloth:

 This fun one from Anthro a while back:

 These from Amanda Uprichard:

 And this adorable one from a promo shoot for the ABC Family series Pretty Little Liars (super random source of inspiration, I know...a guy I know from high school is in the show and I've been watching!).

Anyway, it's a super cute dress style and I love the natural waist!  I wanted to make something similar for myself, and knew I could; it's pretty simple, really.
I modified Simplicity 2497, one of my most-used (but not favorite) patterns.  I've had fit issues with this one before.  I modified it considerably already last fall, turning it into a tunic.  Here's the basic look:

Some of the Cynthia Rowley patterns are super cute, and more modern than a lot of the patterns you see.  So this was a good one to modify: basically, I didn't use the waistband and made an elastic casing out of the skirt piece instead, on the inside of the dress.  Instead of the bias binding around the neck and armholes, I used the spiral ruffle!
That's what I'm calling the collar and armhole ruffles... they're not really ruffles, since they're not gathered, but are instead cut on a sort of eternal bias, cut in a circle.  Here's some pics of how I cut them out:

I measured the circumference of the neck and armholes, and cut circles with those circumferences.  Now I see that I had cut them in smaller circles and sewn them together, I would have had more ruffling.  But, that's ok.  Here's how it turned out!

 Cute with a belt, too!

It's getting a little cool to wear too many times this fall, but we've had some hot days very recently, too.  It's a sheer-ish lightweight cotton that I got yards of once at Goodwill, and lined with some cheap navy lining.  Not as formal as the purple Pretty Little Liars dress, but more of a playdress for warm weather.  I may wear it when I go down to Florida at the end of the month!