Today I get to share with you one of the most gorgeous dresses EVER, the designer is fairly new to designing for CKC and I just LOVE her patterns, they are so unique and all of them just have a cowgirl flair to them...with the right fabric choice that is, and that just rocks our world! While Gracie has LOTS of shoes, her cowboy boots happen to be her favorite. I'm talking about Ms. Kristi by the way...she's done the super cute blazer and the crochet (which I'm still trying to learn) as well as the one I'm about to show you... which I believe it is her first little girl's dress! She knocked it outta the park!
This is Octavia's Ruched Bodice Top and Dress I ofcourse did the dress version! Gracie right now is at the very tip top of CKC's girl size chart for the 3T size so the dress fits her just PERFECT hitting right at her knee. There's usually an approximate finished dress length on the patterns so you can determine if you need to size up or down length wise for your liking by looking at that as it's always been accurate for me! For instance, with this particular dress since I am testing I stayed true to her size. However while in January it's the PERFECT fit, by the time we start to wear it a lot...April/May...she may have grown a few inches. She still falls well within 3T chest measurements though, so if this hadn't been a test I would have just used the 3t width and 4T length to make sure it's still going to fit her well in the warmer months! It's very easy to do that with CKC patterns!
Anyway, with my choice of print, I realize it's a bit harder to tell in the photo, but the top band there is RUCHED and ahhh, it's AMAZING.
Maybe you can see it a little bit better there, it's a brand new bodice style for CKC! I see a few rodeo's in her future in this outfit ;) I also used denim and just a touch of pearls and lace. If you were wondering, I cut the flowers out of the lace print and appliqued them on just stitching around the edges, I didn't use heat and bond or anything I just carefully sewed them down. Then I took some pearls from a 3 strand pearl necklace Miss Priss managed to break one of the strands on (it was mine BTW) and hand stitched them on as well and adorned the center of each of those little flowers with a swarovski crystal, just to give the dress that special POP!
This photo of her I love, I had changed the settings on the camera and forgot to change them back when we changed locations....so it was all bright light behind her! I ruined a whole lot of good pictures from this session because of that error, but I played with this one until I was able to pull her back out of it and I just adore it!
Here you can see that the dress is pleated instead of ruffled, pleats are NOT hard so never ever fear them, just jump in and do it! It's also a welcome change to ruffling, a very welcome change for me on some days! It also, IMO, makes the dress a bit more friendly for those little girls that just don't like all the fluff. AND another one of my favorite parts about Octavia's is that the bottom is banded and NOT hemmed, yup, super duper easy!
Then there's the back...there were a few rounds of testing for this one. This version didn't seem to fit all sizes equally so the back got changed! I did do the next version as well and it's equally gorgeous and fit for my cowgirl, I even used linen on it, BUT, my serger and I had a little tiff when I was connecting the skirt and then I went coo-coo with button placement trying to work out fit for her so it wasn't right and we were so involved with testing not only this dress but another awesome one as well, that I didn't torture her with a second round of photos...boo...it was pretty too! I'll just have to work it over with the final back to show though!
So that left me with no pretty back photos for you :(
But here's a photo I stole from the sneak peek in CKC Pattern Group (if you aren't already a member you will need to request to join), told ya it was awesome. It has what is called a "french curve" on the back, fancy right! I just love it!
Anyway I encourage you to get Octavia while it's HOT because it will be the perfect dress/top for when it IS hot, and it gets pretty hot in Texas! I honestly love it and so will you and your little darlings!
Also don't forget it's 30% off for the first 24 hours after release and that CKC runs a half-off sale EVERY weekend as well as having tiered pricing!!!
And while your at it I highly suggest joining the pattern group as well! It's a great resource to have when sewing CKC patterns as there are plenty of helpful ladies there to get you through any little issue you might run into!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
(as she breaks out into her singing voice)
Happy trails to you, until we meet again...
Happy Sewing!!!
And don't mind her pretty blue butterfly ;)
