Sundress for Mom

My mom called me a few weeks ago to tell me about the cutest sundress her friend made for her granddaughter — the “Cuppy Cake” dress from Pink Fig Patterns.  My mom fell in love with this dress and wanted to make an adult version for herself!  Of course, I am always up for sewing with mom, so when I went to visit her we went right to the quilt store to get fabric.  My mom picked out some beautiful purple and yellow April Cornell fabric for the skirt and we found a great purple in something else for the bodice.

The pattern was pretty easy, but I did have to re-size it so it would fit her.  Luckily, my mom is petite, so we don’t have to change the length or dimensions of the skirt panels.  I just needed to create a pattern for a larger bodice.  Since the skirt was gathered, it would fit nicely on any size bodice we needed.  My mom sewed all the skirt panels together, and then topstitched each one on both sides of the seam (16 panels in all!).  I had the easier task of sewing the bodice and doing the shirring on the back:

It was hard to figure out how large to make the shirred panel as we needed to be able to get it over her head and chest, but also wanted to make sure the elastic was tight enough to hold the dress up.  When I make this pattern again (one for myself), I can going to skip the shirring and put a zipper in the bodice so it will be more fitted.