Recently my girl had a piano recital at the Esplanade Library. She was super excited and asked me to make her a dress.
The pattern is from this Japanese sewing book called "Recital dress for Girls".
She wanted an exact same dress in dark navy blue. So I bought a dark blue stretch gabardine and a lining from Spotlight. Can't remember what's the lining called but it was tagged as Japanese lining which is quite expensive but the drape was excellent and felt so smooth and cool against my skin.
Here's my take of the dress. I followed quite closely to the instruction and cutting layout which is very useful. I adjusted the strap by 4" because it was quite long. I love the wide swingy skirt.
It was hard to photograph the dark colour dress so I have over exposed the photo to show the dress here. The previous photo is more of the true colour. The dress fits here very well and even my family didn't realised that I made the dress.
One of my favourite part of the dress is the big ribbon bow at the back. The construction of the bow is very special. It is constructed with 5 pieces - 2 bow pieces, 2 ribbon pieces and 1 bow loop. The bow is then threaded through the self-made belt.
The big bow really enhanced the dress. I think it is especially important to have a big bow behind the dress as that's what people will see when you are playing on the piano. But because the bow is quite big and heavy, it drag on the belt and make it sag a bit.
And because the dress is quite heavy with the lining, I sew on 2 ribbons just below the arm hole side seams to reduce the stress on the strap when I hang the dress.
