Hi everyone! It’s Kari from That’s-Sew-Kari. I’ve been sewing for spring for a couple months now in anticipation of the changing season. Now that it’s finally arrived, we’ve been enjoying the warmer temps, fresh breezes and blooming trees.
Echo Park Paper Co. has a gorgeous new collection – Flower Garden – that perfectly celebrates the beauty of spring. The collection features florals, stems, plaids and dots in a spring color palette. The prints are so pretty and mix and match perfectly amongst the colorways.
All of the prints in the collection are gorgeous, but I knew I needed to pair a plaid with the main floral. I chose Flower Garden Main Cream, Flower Garden Plaid Coral, and Flower Garden Dots Blue. I had a loose idea of the project, but decided I would let the fabric speak to me.
Boy, did it ever speak! This project was far from quick, but honestly the ‘slow sewing’ projects have been some of my most favorites. Once I received the fabric, I remembered that Peony Patterns recently released a gorgeous spring collection of hand embroidery designs – Tulip. One of the designs included features a bike with fresh cut flowers. So I started stitching… Once I was finished, I had to decide on a dress design. With the help of my daughter, we selected parts of two separate Peony Patterns dresses to create the sweetest spring dress. The bodice comes from the new Freesia Dress and the skirt portion comes from the Poppy Dress.
She loves the extra-twirly skirts and while the Freesia dress comes with a fabulous double circle skirt, she’s gotten too tall to cut the skirts out of normal-width fabric. The tiered skirt of Poppy gives her just enough twirl and I love the silhouette of it. The bottom tier has over 10 feet of gathering! My favorite hemming tip for these super wide tiers is to add a serged edge at the bottom of the completed ruffle tier. Then, when you are ironing, it gives you a perfect 1/4″ width to iron to the wrong side making it easy to easily iron up the hem. After the initial 1/4″ press, repeat with a second 1/4″ press.
Hand embroidery is one of my favorite ways to enhance the beauty of the fabrics. Because you can completely customize the thread colors, it always looks cohesive. My daughter chose the shade of blue for the bicycle and I love that it matches the waist tie.
I am completely smitten with this dress! It will be her Easter dress and she cannot wait to wear it! See more pics and details on my blog!
Be on the lookout this month for this collection to hit your favorite quilt shop. I can’t wait to see what you make. Use hashtags #flowergardenfabric #rileyblakedesigns #iloverileyblake and be sure to tag @rileyblakedesigns when you share!