Frozen Dress

I don't know what I was thinking but I asked my 4 year old niece what kind of dress she wanted for christmas. Naturally, she wanted a Frozen dress. Since she's blonde, I was expecting Elsa (and had actually purchased sparkly blue vinyl in anticipation) but instead she asked for an Anna dress. So instead of a few snowflakes here and there, Anna's dress is chalk full of detailed embroidery. I made a dress out of solid blue fabric using the below pattern which is more of a long top than a full length dress. The fabric wasn't the most comfortable so I lined it with white muslin (first mistake, I should have used a darker lining).

I wanted to make it look like Anna but not to the point where it was a costume. There was some kind soul on the internet that posted detailed files of the embroidery. At first I used vinyl to cut out the stencil on my Cameo but as it turns out, vinyl doesn't stick to fabric. So I did it all over in freezer paper. There was some bleeding but even still, it turned out way better than what I could have done by hand. I left the back of the dress plain but I did a hack job at the hemming and the fabric was fraying so I used some special glue to stop the fraying, you know, something quick so I could just wrap it and be done. Fast forward 20 minutes later where the glue bled through and discolored the fabric. Ughhhhh. I did some quick hand painting to cover the discoloration and I was finally done. So, to the designers at Disney, your overly detailed Anna dress nearly made me crazy but I made it out on the other side so the joke is on you. Better luck next time.

http://shwinandshwin.com/2014/09/modern-baby-doll-top.html