Little girl's pillowcase dress

After unwrapping my new machine, admittedly a little giddy like a child on Christmas morning, I played around with a few controls and stitches before diving in to a new project - my first item of clothing in donkey's years!

I used a pretty cotton print, a couple of rather fancy ribbons and some satin bias tape - never tried it before but thought I'd give it a go...

I used Emma Hardy's "Making Children's Clothes" for the pattern for her "toddler dress" - this turned out to be a wise move, as her pattern is simple to use, but also creates a nice dress with higher front neckline than back.  It's a little short for older girls, at 14-15 inches, so I would extend the length but this should be simple to do.

I combined this pattern with the brilliant tutorial at Little Big Girl Studio: Pillowcase Dress Tutorial.  This provided me with adequate lengths and kept the design a bit more simple - i.e. no lining but bias tape trim.  I used an elastic casing as I wanted to try my hand at elastic, particularly using my new elastic machine stitch!

All in all a very simple project - start to finish in one afternoon/evening (and this for a novice using a new machine!).  The results are really great.  Here's hoping my little girl likes it...