Lots of Tea Parties ....1

There's quite a few sewing pictures that I haven't posted recently, and I think most of them involve some version of the Oliver+S Tea Party Dress. I had no interest in buying this pattern for a long time, mostly because I thought it looked basic and I have sewn a good few pinafores(jumpers) and also it's lack of 'twirl'! But I kept coming back to it because of the curved yoke seam, which I have seen in some vintage childrens patterns.



Finally I gave in and bought it about 6 weeks ago, and it is already up there as one of my most used patterns.

This dress was a birthday present for a niece who has turned 5 and she's my daughter's most favourite cousin. She's tall, so I had to grade the pattern up to a six, which was more time-consuming than difficult, because it is a multi-sized pattern. The fabric is Stenzo cord from DotsnStripes, and I have completely forgotten where I got the elephant ribbon from.

I lined it with some Robert Kaufman Toyland fabric, which I thought she might like and to make up for the lack of twirl, in case that might be an issue.
The seams of the dress are finished with flat-felled seams, these are covered in a tutorial on the O+S blog.

The buttons were in my stash and matched perfectly. And the piping, my first time doing piping, and the directions took all the fear out of it. I even had to put piping on the doll's dress!

And of course my daughter got to model it, with all the accessories. The bag is the same Japanese pattern that I've used a lot recently.



My verdict on the pattern - well worth the investment, even for how to learn to do piping alone, and the directions for how to sew curved seams are also very good.

More Tea-Parties to come ....

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