i’m working hard behind the scenes to get our next film petit project ready for next week (it’s gonna be a good one!), which leaves very little time to blog.  today i’m reposting a dress Em designed herself as part of me sew crazy’s genius series, K.I.D.S.!  you can see all of the posts from the series right here.

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hi me sew crazy readers!  i’m so excited to be here today!!

my 4.5 year old daughter Em and i are sort of a design team, to tell you the truth.  from crazy-looking softies to halloween costumes to fabric selection to entire outfits based on her favorite things, Em has played a pretty major role in my design process for a while now.  i sew with her likes in mind because it helps ensure my projects will get worn, though i try to expand her horizons too (i got her to wear blue by including butterflies and twirl and ruffles on her coraline dress).  we’re at a point where she probably has more confidence in my sewing than i do, proclaiming “mommy can fix it” to the most horrendous of rips!  nice little confidence booster there.

at a pretty early age (like before she turned 2) she decided her favorite color was pink.  she has since added a couple others, and if you ask her now she’ll tell you her favorite colors are “pink and purple and red.”  she’s a much girlier girl than i am – it cracks me up.  so when i drew a simple outline of a girl and asked her to draw something for me to sew, i wasn’t surprised one bit that she reached straight for those colored pencils and drew a pink and purple colorblocked dress (with heart headpiece).

i wanted to make the dress very comfy for her and it seems like she picks her jersey knit dresses to wear quite a bit, so i hit the old navy sale rack (my favorite knit fabric source) for two adult shirts and repurposed them, adding color block purple panels to the signature dress to create this little dress from her design!

she added a few hearts above her head, telling me she would like a heart headband too.  via instagram, the lovely delia reminded me of katie did’s felt heart headbands (side note: if you’ve never seen katie’s site, you should really go, be inspired, then mourn the blogging community’s loss of an amazing talent because of one stupid jerk.  katie remains one of my biggest inspirations and i’m so sad she isn’t blogging anymore, though she does have a pretty great little business going now!).

my hearts are felt too, machine-stitched onto some fold over elastic.

i added puff sleeves (tutorial here from Rae) and kept the existing collar so the buttons would remain functional.

Em loves it.  she chose to wear it to her grandma’s birthday dinner and was so very proud that she designed it herself!  she seemed especially excited about the buttons.  she loves to button buttons.

it was so fun putting big smiles on her face with a dress she designed!

thanks so much for having us, Jessica!  such a fantastic idea for a series and a fun one for Em and i both!