A dress

Lately I've been having trouble finding clothes for my daughter. Here in New Zealand, there seems to be a large hole in the sizes - most kids things only go to 8 or 10 and then suddenly there's nothing. There are few girls size 12, and nothing in a 14 or 16. I'm told she has to wear women's sizes, but she's shaped like a child, not a woman. The XS necklines are halfway to her tummy and the sleeves are 4 inches too long.

So, when faced with her primary school graduation (since when do you graduate from year 6?), I turned to some ancient skills - sewing clothes. There was a time many years ago when I would spend the weekend tailoring a fitted lined suit out of Italian wool crepe to a Vogue Donna Karan pattern. Those days are long gone and it's been over a decade since I followed a dress pattern.

But, some of the girls dresses go up to a 16, so I thought this would be the way to go until my girl gets taller and curvier.

We picked out a pattern (and then called around looking for somewhere who had it in stock - tricky) and some cotton fabric. I spent much of Sunday and another 45 minutes last night finishing it off. Everything was straight forward except the zipper - I always hated zippers. I used to prefer invisible ones in my pencil skirts and cocktail dresses, but I thought I'd just follow the instructions for the standard zipper. It's always the top part near where the slider stops that gets me. And there's always a gap at the top and I can never get the required hook and eye to work. But ignoring that, it came out great.

Since most of my sewing lately has been quilting, it's nice to try out some other techniques and stitches on my Juki F600 machine. The buttonholes turned out fine and I even used the blind hem stitch and special foot for the hem. I'm quite pleased at the end result. Maybe I'll make myself something...