A Little Bird Dress

When I used to talk to this little girl on Facetime, we'd talk like this, "Cheep, cheep-cheep!...Cheeeeep, cheep?"  She loved pretending she was a little bird and her birdhouse was my son's old brown plastic football toy chest. So for her birthday, I made her this little bird dress.

When I thought about making her a special dress for her birthday, I decided that the pattern needed to include ruffles, birds and it needed to be pink. Last year, I made her this yellow dress and she immediately told me that she did not like yellow.  So this year, I knew I needed to stick with things that she positively liked. And that was pink. 

Before I started this dress, I found a fun site for testing out fabrics you're thinking about using for a project. The site is called Pattern Jam. First on the site, I found fabrics I loved and then "favored" them. Then I found a pattern called the Bali Hai which I knew my granddaughter could put on by herself with lots of girly ruffles. Next was the fun part, dropping those "favored" fabrics into place to see which combination I thought looked best. Pattern Jam is a way to audition fabrics and designing before you sew. This is what auditioning the fabrics looks like:

The process of "auditioning" fabrics made designing this dress so much easier.  

I know she likes this dress because she's already worn it three times in one week.  I'm giving myself a big pat on the back for pleasing a four year old!  And also for finding the site Pattern Jam, which helped me design this dress!

Give Pattern Jam a try! As an added bonus for signing up at Pattern Jam, this company is giving away a bundle of fabric when people share Pattern Jam with their friends. When you sign up, you're given a unique code that you can provide your friends. This code enables the company to track where referrals come from. I'd love to hear if you like this design program too.  xoxo Grandma

Linked to: Threading My Way, USS Crafty