Knock it off blog tour

I love a good knock off. I always have a folder full of inspiration waiting for those days when I have nothing else on my plate (which never seems to come), so I was really excited to be part of this Knock it Off blog tour. It meant that I HAD to dip into that inspiration folder! So, I did.

I’ve done several knock offs over the years. You can see them here, here, and here at my old blog daisiesanddresses (I’m slowly migrating everything over here). In fact, knock offs are part of what got me into sewing clothing in the first place. After having my little girl and seeing the price tag of designer dresses, I decided I needed to learn to sew.

I think anyone that enjoys searching for children’s clothing on Pinterest has run across Nellystella at some point. I’ve had this pink and blue Sunday Dress pinned for quite some time. I loved it’s combination of colors, the curved bodice and the subtly curved hem.

This dress was part of the inspiration for my Boho week entry to Project Run and Play (here) and I was lucky that I had it mostly drafted! I had to lengthen the dress quite a bit and I raised the back to more closely resemble the Nellystella sample.

Nellystella’s dress has a zipper, but I really liked the simplicity of no closures on my boho dress, so I married the two in middle and added a split, thread chain and mother of pearl button.

Because of the curvy hem, I incorporated a hem facing. It keeps everything tidy and keeps me from ripping out my hair trying to iron the hem.

I really like the way the dress turned out, even if I didn’t use the same dress for the skirt bottom as the inspiration photo. I was working from my stash and I had no blue seersucker. I had yellow, pink, red, and green. But, apparently, I’ve never purchased blue seersucker.

Even though about 50% of my stash is varying shades of blue, the only blue stripe I had was this striped chambray shirting. I’d used it before on a Lottie, and I had just enough left to cut out this skirt.

Thanks for dropping by to see my look! We’ve had a lot of great blog posts with tons of great inspiration. Be sure to drop by and see what everyone else has sewn up.

Monday, April 24