Strawberry Shortcake for Hopeful Threads

I made one last dress for Hopeful Threads' project this month: make dresses for the Dress A Girl Around the World organization. The overall goal at the beginning of the month was to make 100 dresses, but because of a wonderful response from bloggy-land, the goal has been raised to 200 dresses! I made 4 dresses from pillowcases I made (read that post here), but then I won a giveaway for a dress kit!

Kristy from Hopeful Threads, gave away all the necessities to make a pillowcase dress, fabric, bias tape, and elastic. She also threw in some lace!

Without the giveaway, I would not have made a 5th dress, so I'm extremely grateful for Kristy's generosity!

And look! Once I opened up the fabric completely, I found more goodies! A button and three labels :)

Without further ado, here's the dress I made from Kristy's giveaway. 

I sewed one line of decorative stitching along the top front. That way I was able to remember which side was the front! (The front elastic is 7" and the back is 8"... I didn't want to sew the pockets on the 8" side!)

I sewed a 3" hem and attached the lace right on top my stitching.

She sent more than enough lace, so I added pockets; however, I didn't have any blue fabric that matched the bias tape, so I used this pink polka dot from JoAnn's to make 6" pockets (I made 5" pockets before, but I like this size much better). There is also another line of decorative stitching above the lace on each pocket.

I finished it off with one of the labels from the giveaway. Complete :)

I then added the other two labels to two of my first dresses I made!

Now, I just need to mail them off to the nearest Dress A Girl Around the World representative. What a great organization :)

Thanks again, Kristy, for the wonderful dress kit!

Four Dresses

Check out Hopeful Threads and the awesome monthly projects... April's project is to sew dresses for Dress A Girl Around the World, an organization that aims to provide a dress to every little girl in the world.  Cool, right?

Well,  I wasn't sure if I was going to participate or not. I have plenty of thrifted pillowcases in my stash, but then I read at Dress A Girl, that if someone sews a pillowcase dress, they really want that pillowcase to be new. It makes sense, if the recipient is only going to have one dress in their life, we want it to last... 

But then, I found two sets of pillowcases in the Walmart Clearance aisle. The orange set was originally $20 for the pair, but it was on sale for $7, and the other set was originally $10, but it was on sale for $5. I threw them in the cart and picked up some bias tape. I was set!

I tried to make each dress slightly different... no one likes wearing the same dress at prom as someone else, right?! So on this orange one, I added a decorative stitch in several places. 

This orange one got green pockets with brown rick rack and a double stitch along the bias tape straps.

Both of the brown dresses got pockets, but they each have different buttons!

I did do a triple-stitch zig-zag on one of the dresses' straps, but it gave me a hard time, so the other brown dress only had a straight stitch.

I'm so happy that I participated... it felt really good making something that some little girl will appreciate!