Lucky Strikes dresses |

This was written by Cherie from you & mie for the Miss Matatabi Makers series.

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Hellooooo! Oh my goodness, I’m the worst blogger ever! I love to sew, but photographing, editing photos and writing posts is like pulling teeth for me! I made two dresses a couple weeks ago and was supposed to write this post a week ago and oops, here I am now. Better late than never?

For this Miss Matatabi Makers project I chose from the awesome new Cotton + Steel collections, which is always a challenge – so many great prints, how do you choose!? I started with the sweet floral print from Kim Kight’s Lucky Strikes line, Clothesline Floral in Periwinkle and Red and planned to make dresses for the girls. I’m sharing one here and the other one you can find over at my blog, you & mie!

The dress I made for Yuki is made with the Periwinkle floral. I love this fabric. The colors are beautiful and I knew Yuki would love the flowers. To coordinate with it I picked the new basic print, Sprinkle in Corduroy. I love this fabric too! Great color, great print. I guess that’s what I could say about all of the Cotton + Steel prints! Anyways, the two fabrics don’t actually match perfectly, but close enough for me.

The fabric is quilting cotton and though I’ve generally started steering away from quilting cottons for clothing, I find that it can work for kids clothes. Cotton + Steel is great quality, easy to sew and easy to wear and wash. Can’t really ask for more.

I started with the Geranium Dress pattern by Made by Rae, which is my “go to” dress pattern for kids. In fact, the dress I made for my other daughter also started with the Geranium Dress pattern but went in a totally different direction! Anyways, I made some modifications, the back being the obvious one.

This triangle back started out as a vision in my head and I had to work out the construction also in my head, which is the scary part about self-drafting or modifying your patterns. Overall, I’d say it worked (in that there is a triangle opening and my child can wear it), but it is not exactly the dress I had pictured, nor is the fit perfect. The most problematic part is that since the bodice is not very fitted, the back gapes open depending on how she’s standing or moving. I may try to adjust the pattern more and use an invisible side zipper to get a more fitted bodice that we can still get her in and out of. Or maybe I won’t and we’ll just call it good.

I lowered the neckline a bit and narrowed the shoulders. The skirt is just a gathered rectangle skirt with pockets, of course, and I added pintuck pleats because it’s just a sweet detail. And I can let the pleats out to lengthen the dress in case Yuki has a growth spurt!

If you want to check out the other dress I made, head over to my blog to see the details! It’s a wrap dress in the other Clothesline Floral color way and I think I like it even more than the dress I made for Yuki!