Art Gallery series: An Arty dress by Isabelle + Give-away

Isabelle is the first contributor of our 2nd challenge. Art Gallery sponsored 1 fabric (knit or cotton) in two colour ranges that we used in different ways! The dress Isabelle has sewn is STUNNING! She proves that the Louisa is the perfect basic dress to start experimenting. The pleats she added are perfection. An Ileana button placket is the perfect finishing touch. Thanks a lot Isabelle for inspiring us! Now let’s hope summer will arrive soon! Scroll down for more info on the Art Gallery give-away!

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For our 2nd contributors week, we all used the same fabric in cotton or knit. Art Gallery was the sponsor of our fabrics. It was a challenge because the contributors have different taste in fabrics. And we could choose between a lot of collections from Art Gallery. Marte gave us a few options, and I chose this one in cotton. For the lining I used a solid fuschia cotton to match the fabric. I made a simple Louisa dress without the sleeves and the pocket. With an eyecatcher in the upper piece in a contrast color.

I cut the front piece of the pattern to make a top piece with pleats. Making pleats is really not difficult. I already made a tutorial using a different kind of fabric origami. But these pleats proved to be a challenge. :-) They fell open when my little girl did a first dressfitting. So I had to use fusible interfacing between each of the pleats. But for the first ones on the schoulders, I also had to handstitch the pleats.

The width of the pleats is 0.58 inches (or 1.5 cm). By using a middle piece like the one in the Ileana dress, you can add a little detail.

We really had Belgian weather the past few weeks, so I sewed a bolero matching the dress. Luckily the pictures were taking on a beautiful springday!

For the hem I used a blue bias strip, matching the piping and the buttons.

The pictures are taking in a favorite park of mine in beautiful Gent.

Pattern : Louisa dress for kids by Compagnie M.
Fabric : Arboretum Inspirit by Art Gallery combined with Festival Fuschia, and a detail of a mostard yellow cotton.
Buttons and piping: Stoffenkamer.

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Art Gallery give-away! Go to my Facebookpage and Instagram feed to participate in the two give-aways to win this Art Gallery fabric bundle! One small note: I had to take out the fabric above, because I didn’t have enough fabric to finish my own contributors creation. Sorry!