Sleeveless Yoke Dress

After my last few posts I'm sure you all thought that all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put my sewing together again...

But during my separation little vacation I realized that maybe I had it wrong.... maybe instead of rushing through the easy way out and sewing for the instant gratification of finishing something, I should get my humpty dumpty off my comfort wall and finally try tackling that endlessly dreamed of circular yoke dress for Sienna.

I knew there would be no yoking around with the tricky circular neckline on this dress... apparently, I also dreamed of finding an excuse to make as many egg puns as my heart desires :)

...so I tucked my darling kidlets into bed, grabbed my rough sketches from the road, my tiny eyeglasses screw driver and some new machine oil before heading back to my sewing room to offer a little tune up to my beloved machine in hopes of winning her forgiveness.

It worked!

With a little patience, some careful measuring, clipping and pinning I managed to figure out how to seamlessly (ok, almost seamlessly) match up the inner and outer pieces with the interfacing on the yoke. If anybody has any tips on an easy way to do this, I'm all ears!

After wrestling with the yoke for quite a while I was delighted to find that designing the actual dress part was a breeze!

In fact, once I saw how quickly the dress came along I decided to toss in a little fishy pocket with the scraps from the yoke.

This was Sienna's favorite part.

And Sienna, of course, was my favorite part of the dress!

I almost cried when I saw her scream with joy when she found her new dress at the breakfast table when she woke up.

She put it on right away and ran to find all the accessories she needed to match... pink hair clip, pink shoes, pink dress for her doll, pink purse...
where does this girl come from?

Later, she did give me the constructive feedback, "have to have TWO fishies Mommy- one right there and one right there!" as she aggressively pointed to her perceived void in the dress....

When I told her I could make another fish, but I'd have to take the dress off first, she quietly sank back onto the park bench and said,

"no thanks Mommy!"

I guess one pocket will do :)