The Buzz Dress

I think this dress is easily one of my favorite things I've ever made. Charlotte LOVES Buzz Lightyear. So much in fact that she calls the Toy Story series of movies the "Buzz 1", "Buzz 2", and "Buzz 3". I got the idea for this dress almost 2 years ago when her love for Buzz started, but due to life and other projects, it got set on the back burner. Then, with an upcoming Disneyland trip, I decided to break it out and finally get it made!

Thankfully, in my excitement I bought all the fabric I would need for the project two years ago and its just been sitting in my stash ever since. The main dress was simple enough, I made a few simple modifications to the Violette Field Threads Ginger Dress. I added a button and 3 pieces of ribbon to the collar detail, and added a ruffle to the bottom of the skirt.

Then came the wings, the piece de resistance. I self drafted the wings by measuring from Charlotte's center back to her wrist, then used a quilting ruler and some freezer paper to draw how I wanted the wings to look. I then cut those pieces out traced them and added 1/2" seam allowance on all sides. (my go to when self drafting and also the seam allowance in most of the Violette Field Threads patterns).  I added elastic loops to slip over her wrists so she could 'fly' whenever she wanted to, and stitched in the ditch to attach them to the bodice back. After she tried it on I added  ribbon to keep the wings up that we looped the dress ties through.

Overall it was a fairly quick sew probably 2 hours or so including cutting time, making the ruffle, and the wings. The best part of all though was her wearing it in the park. We wore it to California Adventure, since we knew some of the Toy Story characters make an appearance over there, and as luck would have it Woody was out when we were walking by. It ended up being the perfect interaction now that she is no longer super shy around the characters, and we got tons of great photos both from us and the Photopass photographers. So many in fact that we decided to go ahead and buy Photopass for the trip.

This dress was the first thing I've sewed as part of my 'Sew 30 things for the girls' 30 Before 30 challenge, and I've already got a few more things lined up to share! AND its my second weekly blog update - yay for sticking to my goals!