Butterflies for Ponchik

I think it is obvious to anyone who's been around for a while that my style has evolved quite a bit since 2012, when I started sewing seriously for myself.  A lot has happened in that time!  When I first started, I was really into novelty prints and made a lot of dresses.  These days, I tend to gravitate more toward texture over print, and separates before dresses.  It's fine--just part of getting older, I think.  But sometimes I forget that and buy a print that I would have liked a couple of years ago, but now just doesn't really suit my style. 

 

Such was the butterfly lawn that I bought in May to make a dress from.  The price was too good, and the colors were all in my wardrobe palette.  Even though I had a long think about the butterflies, I thought maybe they would work.  And half price lawn is nothing to sneeze at, particularly in all those great colors!  

That said, it just wasn't my jam.  The dress is just okay, and the shirt ended up feeling too much like scrubs.  (What is wrong with me??)

I decided to transform the shirt into another dress for Ponchik, since she wears the first shirt-to-dress iteration I made her so much that I figured a second would get good wear too.  I still had plenty of the orange mystery fabric I used for her first dress, and it was a good match for the orange butterflies, so off I went, using the original dress as a guide.  I took the shoulders up an inch and adjusted the facings accordingly, but left the width the same.  I took off the hem facing and added the contrast skirt with a waist casing and contrast tie.  I ended up adding 6" of elastic to the middle of the tie to lengthen it and give the dress a bit more stretch for wearing and it is great now--she really loves it.

I admit, the finished dress is very similar to the first one, but Ponchik likes it, so that's what counts!  I did put the Lepidoptera dress into the fabric bin to cut down for one of the girls at some point, so she may end up getting a whole butterfly dress next summer.  I think at this point in the season, she can get through on the clothes she has, but the fabric will not go to waste, and it will be a nice new thing for her next year!