Letting go of creative control

I asked my daughter to draw on the bottom of this tunic dress...the process was a fine line between giving her artistic freedom and getting the effect I was after. I limited her colour palette and gave instructions to draw and not colour-in (originally I was planning to embellish the drawings with fabric remnants, but I have decided to leave it as-is).


Here are some close-ups of the hem.


Lucky it was a quick project, because she stood over me whilst I did my bit at the sewing machine. She wore it this afternoon, layered over her winter clothes. She is a natural at "layering", mostly because she likes the prettiest item to be on top where everyone can see it. This principle even extends to wearing her bikini on the outside of her swim shirt!

The pattern is from Burda WOF 4/2008 140, contributed by Paris designer Barbara Lang. It is a very simple pattern, with the back the same as the front. Instead of using facings, I used 2 layers of fabric to make the dress, with the bottom layer extended ~10 cm longer than the tunic pattern. For this bottom 10 cm I felled the side seams, so that no raw edges showed on the outside. The pictures were drawn with Crayola fabric markers.