A new dress for my kindergartener!

I planned ahead this year, and made a dress just for Little Sister's first day of kindergarten.  And lucky me, September's Project Run and Play theme turned out to be Back to School clothes, so I can link this up!

I may have overplayed that point (wanted to make sure she actually agreed to wear it on the first day!), because now she thinks she will ONLY wear that dress on the first day of kindergarten--I really hope that doesn't turn out to be the case!

The fabric is a fun take on traditional Japanese prints--she loves the bunnies!

This is the second time I've sewn a Desert Rose dress from the pattern by Caila Made.  I just love the proportions of this dress!  The first one that I made (from naniIRO double gauze) fit Little Sister perfectly, but this time I sized up anyway so that it would last longer--it's really a summer dress, but I thought that with the extra room she could wear a shirt under it, and it will definitely still fit next summer.

And pockets, of course!

Also, this time I made the straight skirt instead of the angled one.  It is a bit less twirly but still plenty full!  She loves the big skirt on this dress.  Which reminds me--I did add extra length to the skirt.  It's a size 5 width but the size 8 length.  I feel like I could go even longer and Little Sister would be happy.

Taking it for a twirl

One issue that I had this time around is that I used a pretty heavy fabric for the skirt, and since the bodice fabric was lighter, the seam where the skirt is gathered looks kind of bulky.  I would advise sticking to the same weight of fabric for the bodice and skirt (or a lighter one for the skirt) to avoid this.

We found a new fun mural for taking pics by our house--but I had to be careful about which parts of the mural I used!

Don't look now...but there might be a big wolf right behind you!

We couldn't get a babysitter for the photoshoot so Little Sister had to bring her little ones with her...

They didn't get too fussy.

 And here's the actual first day of school look!  The weather cooled down enough to require a little sweater, her choice instead of layering a shirt underneath.