Rapunzel Dress

A friend of mine pinned a link to an etsy store selling girls dresses based on the dresses of Disney Princesses. The little miss is quite the fan of anything Disney Princess, so I re-pinned it of course. The Etsy store was My Kids Drawers but I think she's too busy with the orders she gets through Facebook so she isn't putting anything on Etsy at the moment. You can find her on Facebook by looking up 'My Kids Drawers' though.

What I loved about her princess dresses was that they are 'real' dresses that can be worn out and about without looking costumey, but it's also obvious (to anyone who knows their princesses) what they are styled on.

The little miss's current favorite princess is Rapunzel, so I decided to make a little something extra for her birthday. I liked the idea of the dresses being a pesant style: firstly because they are easy for young ones to get on & off themselves, but also because they are a pretty basic style dress and easy to make without a pattern.

Besides being purple, I think the main thing a Rapunzel dress needs is some lacing up the front. I thought long and hard about how I could do this... I thought of using metal eyelets, or strips of fabric with button holes, or sewing on loops of ribon, but they all seemed like just a little bit too much effort! I looked through all of the notions at my local fabric store and found exactly what I needed – pre-sewn elastic loops on a crochet-type strip. I covered it up with some pretty ribbon and used thin ribbon in the same shade for the lacing. I had originally planned to put elastic on the bottom of the sleeves, but when I was sewing them up I really liked the way they looked without the elastic, so I just hemmed them instead.

All in all I'm very happy with how it all turned out in the end; but most importantly, the little miss just adores it!