As in my mind

Some weeks ago I was attending a dentist visit with my youngest, and while waiting I was flipping through a magazine. When my eyes fell on the picture above, I knew all of a sudden how L's birthday dress would be. And this idea was there to stay; the egg hàd to come out soon after.

At first I was thinking about the fabric. It had to be cotton and stepped or at least have some embossment. As our fabric shop only sells polyester lining fabrics, I considered to buy and use this coverlet of Ikea. Finally I decided to make the stepped cotton fabric myself, and was able to choose color, thread and topstitch.
A relatively thin fiberfill layer was added between lining and outer fabric. I first cut the pattern pieces, as used before and found in this book, and then topstitched horizontal in the color of the fabric and on 60° with yellow thread.

The circular skirt I turned inside out to avoid a seam at the bottom of the skirt. After finishing the body piece, I measured it's bottom line to be sure about the size of the circle I had to cut out of the skirt. How to make the cap sleeves I found as well on Griet's blog.

For the accent edging I chose yellow and a salmon pink in the color of L's cheeks. As you can see I wanted to avoid a shoulder seam in the yellow part of the edge.

About the topstitching a final note: my head wasn't able to finish this laborious job. I decided to decrease the number of yellow lines of the skirt. And I was happy about that: the handmade look of the fabric is more obvious now and I like the change of embossment, something you might not see at once, but only when you look closely. This kind of perception on different scales is my cup of tea.