Secret sewing - revealed!

I have been just dying to share this sweet little dress with you, but I had to wait until the pattern was officially released.  Well wait no more, dear friends!



Shannon from luvinthemommyhood designed the most lovely pattern called the sweetheart dress, and I was lucky enough to test it out last month.



Why is it called the sweetheart dress, you ask?



Check out this completely unexpected and adorable heart cutout on the back! 



The dress features a fitted and fully lined bodice - and believe it or not, this was my first time making a lined bodice!  Constructing the bodice was a piece of cake thanks to Shannon's pattern, and she even teaches you a couple of neat tricks to put everything together and hide all of your seams.

How adorable is that lining fabric peeking through the sweetheart back?



For the main dress fabric, I went with a print from Denyse Schmidt's Meadow Lark line from Joann's, and I lined the bodice with a print from Hello Pilgrim by Lizzyhouse.  The mini pom-pom trim was a complete last minute addition on my part, but I think it really puts a nice finishing touch on the dress since I used such a subdued print.



Shannon also includes a tutorial for a hand-sewn button loop, which uses a fun method that I have never tried before - but I'll be sure to use it again in many projects.  I love when a pattern teaches me new things!



Making this dress was a nice warm up to Elsie Marley's kids clothes week challenge that starts next week.  If you're not familiar with kcwc, it's a week where you set aside one hour each day to sew clothes for your kids.  The idea is that we all have the urge to sew clothes for our children, but we don't always give ourselves the time to do it.  Well this is the week, folks!  I probably won't have a blog post for everyday (it's not blog writing challenge week after all),  but I'll definitely be popping in with some project updates.  I look forward to seeing yours!