Pleats and a Giveaway!

I am a sucker for pleats.  Like an absolute sucker.  So when I was playing around with some new material last night, I decided that pleats were just what this dress needed.

My original intention was to sew gathered tulle to the bottom, but have you ever tried to sew with tulle?  Crazy frustrating.  I did not have the patience for it last night.  I am definitely glad that I gave up on the tulle because I LOVE how this turned out.

I do not have a picture tutorial, instead just some basic directions.  You can follow this post for a basic construction of the dress.  Obviously you will need to add length as the tutorial is for a shirt.  You can also follow tutorials here, here, or here.  Whatever one fits your fancy.  The only difference I made to the construction was on the sleeves and the neckline.  Instead of making my elastic casing right along the edge of the sleeve and neckline, I sewed a seam about a half an inch away from the edge and then made my casing.  I wanted there to be a little more of a ruffled look on the edges.  You can see the seams in the picture above.

For the pleats, I ended up doing it one way and realized later that it wasn't very efficient.  If I had thought about it ahead of time:  When sewing the front and back dress piece together, stop about three or four inches from the bottom.  Do not forget to back stitch. Cut two strips of material five inches wide and long enough to form your pleats.  Fold in half hot dog style (why yes that IS a technical term...) and iron fold.  Sew or serge the raw edges. 

Make your pleats by following this tutorial.  No point of reinventing the wheel, right?  Pin the pleats underneath the dress.  Try and make sure that your pleats are even across the dress.  Sew about a fourth an inch away from the bottom hem of the dress.  This seam will attach the pleats and give you a top stitch at the same time.  Now that you have your pleats sewn to the front and the back of your dress, finish sewing the last few inches that we left open on the sides. 

I finished the dress of by adding some flowers.  There are so many tutorials for these rolled flowers on the internet.  You can google "fabric flowers" or Make It and Love It has a few tutorials in her "No Sew" section.  I attached my flowers to a pin so that they could be removed for washing.

Love it?  Want to win one?

I will be giving away one custom made dress.  Just leave a message for the following entries:

(Remember leave ONE message for EACH entry)

1. Follow my blog.  This does not really mean anything to you, just to me. 

2. Post about the giveaway on Facebook.

3. Post about the giveaway on your blog.

The giveaway will close Sunday, September 18th at midnight.  The winner will be announced Monday.  Good luck!