Cocoon Dress.

I have been craving a pretty little dress to sew, lately I have been making lots of shirts and some pants, it was time for a dress.  

So I chose the Heidi and Finn Cocoon dress.  I wasn't going to buy the pattern initially, but then I saw an adorable plaid version in the facebook group and it changed my mind.

I made both the girls a size 4t with 5t length.  Since I was only going up one size in length and the lines were fairly close together in width, I graded out from the 4t to a 5t right where it starts to curve, so the chest is a 4t width and the curve width is a 5t.

These tights are ridiculously big on her.  To be fair, I had planned for Iz to wear these, but George wanted to wear these boots, so she got this one (for today).  They are also big on Izzy, but not *as* big.

The pattern calls for heavier fabrics to hold the unique shape of the garment.  For this dress, I used a heavyweight stretch denim I bought online forever and a day ago, before I learned how to buy fabric online (pay attention to how many ounces!).  It sat in my stash for so long, but it was like it had just been waiting for this dress all along.

The pattern calls for an exposed zipper, but also has a button closure option.  I really dig the look of the exposed zipper, but couldn't find any cool ones.  Then it hit me, jeans zippers.  They were just the right length and I found some pretty rad ones at my local hardware/fabric shop.  It is hard to tell, but this zipper has a diagonal blue and white stripe.

This dress is made from a ponte de roma, and while it is one of the heavier weight knits (the pattern specifically recomends stable knits), it still doesn't hold the shape quite like the denim does.  But it isn't a bad thing, I quite like the way it moves while she's wearing it.

I just adore both these dresses, they will be so fun to layer up in the fall.  Now they just need cute cardigans or jackets to go with them.

I changed up the zipper a little from the pattern.  It instructs you just to lay it down and sew it, but I wanted a cleaner look, so I tucked the bottom raw edges under.  Much better, in my opinion.  In fact, I completely unpicked the zipper in the blue dress to change it as it was the first one I made.  That's saying a lot, because I hate my seam ripper.

They are so much harder lately to photograph together, ugh!  Luckily they are pretty adorable...