Another Elizabeth Stewart Clark Girls' Dress

Here's another one that was on hold during December. This is the size 3 girls' dress from Elizabeth Stewart Clark. I really wanted to use box pleats with this print, and they turned out lovely. I'm loving the look of piping and am getting somewhat confident with it, so I used quite a bit. I've never done "coat sleeves," so I thought I'd give them a try. I thought an older girl would do well with long sleeves.

I'm really not sure what size girl it will fit (maybe age 9 or 10?), but I really wanted to use this reproduction fabric for a girl, not too young, not real old. I probably should have waited to make this dress (until my girl needed one this size - in 6 or 7 years... right...) because I'm not sure if the waistband or the length is going to work.

I actually kind of goofed because I was supposed to add 4" to the waistband and somehow forgot. I then tore out the skirt, guessing the length, sewed it on, and then the whole thing just looked disproportionate. I'm used to looking at little girls' dresses and ladies' dresses, not this in between stuff. As long as my girl is skinny when she's 9 or 10, the waistband will fit. Then, I can add some length to the skirt if I need to; I'll just make it look like a growth tuck in there, when it's really the hem of one dress with an extension added on!


Here is the back of the dress. I used 10 wooden buttons spaced about 1.5" apart.


I put a box pleat in at the top of the sleeve to remove the excess. I've never done that before, but I quite like it.


The print makes it hard to see, but in these old dresses, you rotate the underarm seam a bit forward and the cap of the sleeve a bit backward from center, so the fullness of the sleeve is at the back-top of the shoulder rather than centered on top. (The picture is of the underarm. I was trying to point out the forward rotation of the sleeve's underarm.)


I used a hook & eye for the wrist closure.