Hearty Hydrangeas: Sofia the First Dress

We love to watch Sofia because of the good values the show teaches young girls. So naturally this was the first Disney Princess dress I made for my 3-year old Sweet (her real name begins with S too)!

Princess S!

I had a LOT of fun making this dress. The smile on my daughter's face is my well-deserved trophy!! The amulet was bought from JCPenney. She enjoyed twirling & singing the Sofia intro song and watching back-to-back episodes of the show on Netflix.

So what do you need to make this beautiful dress?

1 yard of poly-satin fabric in Violet
1/2 yard of poly-satin fabric in White
1 yard of white lace
1 yard of pearl trim
Matching zipper and multi-purpose thread
Heat n bond ultrahold iron-on adhesive sheets (not pictured)
Walking foot (not pictured) This made my job easy peasy!

Bodice & Sleeves:

From this point on, the fabric is going to look different because of the low lighting in the basement (my sewing den). But I promise it is the same beautiful Violet!

This is an unlined bodice. Any existing pattern that you have will work. I used one that I had drafted for Sweet's summer dresses. It has one front piece cut on fold and two back pieces not on fold.

For the sleeves, I took my self-drafted sleeve pattern and exaggerated the bell portion (so that you can gather a lot) to make poofy sleeves.

Before sewing up we'd first need to add the lace trim to the front bodice.

After adding the lace, I went ahead and sewed up the bodice (including the sleeves) as one would normally do. I finished the neck opening and sleeve opening with a hem. I tried the bodice on my daughter to check for adjustments. My daughter was super-excited at this point! Then I added the zipper closure to the back.

Next comes the beautiful pearl trim. I hand sewed this to the front bodice and the neckline with the violet thread. Oops! in my excitement I forgot to take pictures for this step.

Here is the finished almost finished bodice after adding sleeves.

Skirt

The original skirt has a white in-skirt and a scalloped violet outer skirt with emblems.

But I kept things simple by omitting the in-skirt.

Main skirt

I cut out 2 rectangles with the Violet satin fabric of dimensions 17.5" (L) x 39" (W).

Then I made a template for the scallop with dimensions 4.5" deep ad 13" at the widest part.

I used the template to cut each rectangle into 3 scallops along the long edge.

This will give 6 scallops in total.

Emblem

I created the emblem image using Adobe Photoshop and imported it into Cricut Explore workspace. Each emblem was around 4.5" in diameter.

I prepped the white satin fabric by ironing on the Heat n Bond adhesive sheet to the dull side. Then I placed the prepped satin (12" x 12") on the Cricut mat and cut out 6 emblems.