By Mama With Love: Tiered Bubble Dress

When I saw the Project Run and Play challenge this month was a bubble dress my mind immediately drifted to this red polka dot fabric I had used to make Lenore's Christmas outfit.

I knew it would make a cute bubble skirt and be perfect for a Valentine's Day outfit too.

But I also knew a lot of people would be making skirts. Whether or not they would be tiered I wasn't sure. But I wanted to submit an outfit that would be different from the rest, so I decided to go ahead with Kai's bubble shirt.

After reading that you could submit more than one entry I decided to see if I could find the time to make a tiered bubble dress by the deadline. I had fun playing with the design. Deciding how long to make each tier, whether or not to add sleeves, and what kind of sleeves I wanted it to have was a lot of fun.
Between the Cub Scouts Space Derby, Kai selling 800 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and the flu hitting our family for the second time, to say that I've been busy is quite the understatement. But I burned the midnight oil and managed to get this pretty little dress finished in time.

I made a tutorial for this dress. You can find it here. I did take pictures along the way.

I decided to shirr some white cotton for the waist, because the thought of gathering 6 layers of fabric for the skirt to sew to the bodice just didn't sit well with me. Instead of using elastic thread I used 1/4 inch elastic. And we just love the flexibility it gave me with playing around with the bodice. I was able to shorten and widen it a bit to give it a blousy feel. Carolina loves the way it hugs her abdomen so comfortably.

My husband recently removed some shirts from his closet, that he no longer wanted and thoughtfully cut the buttons off to save for my sewing supplies before making rags out of the shirts.

I was glad too, because I wanted small white buttons for the back of the dress, and thanks to him I already had them.

When I was sewing I happened to toss the dress on top of another project I had on the sewing table that had this turquoise fabric and thought it looked so well together I decided to make a little flower to go on the dress.