Fairy Tale Dress Archives

My first Fairy Tale Dress was almost a year ago, and I adjusted it to make my daughter’s baptismal gown. At that time, I was still pretty new to garment sewing. I think it was my third dress ever. I chose to go from the Made by Rae Itty Bitty Dress, to the Made by Rae Geranium Dress, to the Oliver & S Fairy Tale Dress. It was a pretty big learning curve. Now that I have actually sewn the pattern as written, I feel better about writing a Fairy Tale Dress pattern review.

I have to say I was much more confident this time than I was last time. Although, last time I had the advantage of ignorance – I didn’t know enough to know that I had chosen a challenging pattern with silk and “scary” invisible zippers. If I had realized what I was doing was supposed to be harder, I don’t know if I would have finished it so quickly.

Pattern: Oliver & S Fairy Tale Dress

Fabric Required: From pattern (44-45″ wide): 1 3/4 yards of main fabric, and 1 yard of lining fabric.

Amount of fabric used: A little under 1 yard of main fabric (52″ wide), and a little under 1 yard of lining fabric. If anyone has a use for just over a yard of silver silk dupioni, please let me know!

Sizing: I used the 12-18 month size for width, 18-24 month size for bodice length, and I added 2 inches to the 18-24 month skirt length to make it mid-calf instead of knee length.

Alterations: I had to lengthen the front of the bodice by 1/2″. I just added the 1/2″ to the middle and tapered it to the normal length at the sides. It was a small change, but helped fit over the toddler belly a little bit better. I also tacked the collar down because it was flipping up too much for my taste when she tried it on pre-wedding.

Sash: I didn’t want to use either version of the sash as published in the pattern. I was hoping to have my daughter wear this for Christmas so I didn’t want to sew the sash to the dress. I liked the wide sash in the back, but sometimes the super wide sashes on the front of a dress overwhelms little girls. I decided to use the pattern pieces for the back, but sew it to a narrower portion for the front of the dress.

Instructions: As expected with Oliver & S, these were good instructions. I did use couple additional tutorials shown below.

Tutorials Used:

How to hand stitch a hem – I used the slipstitch to hem the outer dress. I don’t hand sew many things, but it felt right for this dress.

How to install an invisible zipper – Liesl’s instructions are good, but I like the photos in this tutorial.
How to Tie a Perfect Bow – This method worked great, it was a little worn by the end of the night, but that’s to be expected.

Pattern Issues: The only step that I had any issues with was attaching the zipper to the dress exterior. In some of the diagrams it showed the seam finished, in others it wasn’t, and it didn’t mention in the directions the right time to finish the seam. I was using a serger to finish the seams and chose poorly, because I should have finished that back seam before attaching the zipper. I ended up serging from the bottom as close as I could to the zipper. The rest of it gets encased in the lining. This dress won’t be going through a washing machine, so it will probably be fine.

Although, I do have to add – why is there not a table with the width of the skirts for each size? I hated having to print out 8 extra pieces of paper for the three skirt pieces when I knew I was just going to cut the skirt as one continuous piece. This skirt doesn’t need side seams. It makes it slightly easier to line stuff up, but as long as you mark where the side seams would have been there is not issue lining up the skirt to the bodice.

Fabric Choice:

– Outer: I used silk dupioni from NY Fashion Center Fabrics in 137 – Silver. I was fortunate that they had a Labor Day sale that lowered the price point when I needed to order it.

– Tulle: I also ordered the gray tulle from NY Fashion Center Fabrics in the same sale.

– Lining The lining was a cheap voile from Fabric Mart that appears to be out of stock now. I was too cheap, and should have used a better quality voile (even though it would have cost more). It looks fine in the finished garment, but it was so thin that it was horrendous to sew and I was fighting it the whole time. I think Tim Gunn has a quote that a successful garment starts at Mood, and he is so right. I thought I had learned my lesson on cheap vs. good value fabric, but I’m still learning it over and over.

Finished Product: I love this dress as a party dress for a little girl. The color isn’t the best color for my daughter’s complexion, but she was the flower girl for a wedding whose colors were grey and blue. I only had 1/2 yard of the matching blue fabric, so I used that to make the sash.

Husband’s opinion: He loves this dress.

Final Thoughts: This is my second time making this dress, and I will probably make it again if another fancy occasion comes up. I may have to use a different collar or something next time so people don’t realize I keep using the same pattern over and over!

Linking up to: Sew + Show Wednesday @ Straight Grain, Show off Saturday at Sew Can She, Threading your way @ Threading my Way

A tale of two christening gowns: The heirloom and the Oliver & S Fairy Tale Dress

Situation: The first was my baptism dress from when I was baptised and my mother passed it on to me to use with my daughter. I was baptized at 6 months so I thought it would fit my 9 month old daughter. Unfortunately, it did not fit. That left my mother and I to start making a dress Thursday morning for church on Sunday morning at 9:00 am with the added detail that 6 additional family members were arriving Saturday afternoon, so it had to be finished before then.

Solution: We chose to flip the Oliver & S Fairy Tale Dress. I wanted a peter pan collar and sleeves with an empire waist to echo my original dress that my mother had made. The fairy tale dress gave me that bodice top and the adjustments gave the long traditional bottom.

To accomplish this I had to make a couple minor adjustments to the pattern. I cut off the fitted dress at an empire waist height, and adjusted the skirt length to go down to the floor. I also took a lot of the gathering out of the skirt because of the silk dupioni fabric I chose to use, and I also felt like it would be overwhelming for such a little girl.

My daughter measured 19.5 inches at the chest which put her as a perfect size 6-12 months, but due to the compressed time frame I didn’t have time for a muslin and couldn’t risk it not fitting. Therefore, I made the 6-12 month size with the 12-18 month width as you can see in the bodice pattern photo. After it was finished, she had enough room that I’m sure the 6-12 month width would have fit perfectly fine but I just couldn’t risk it turning out too small.

I also added ruffle fabric for the skirt. I made the ruffle fabric about 4-5 inches longer than the silk just to cut down on bulk and make it easier for my daughter to move and easier for me to hold her.

To add the ruffle fabric I used the silk as the lining, but not as the lining like the pattern calls for. Due to the thinness of the ruffle fabric, I could not use it as an outer layer to attach the zipper to. I treated the silk and the ruffle as one (outer) layer of fabric with no lining. This (combined with the empire waist) led to a couple minor differences from the pattern:

– The skirt seams had to be finished because they were not sandwiched within the lining. The ruffle fabric does not fray so it did not need to be finished – I just cut it at the length I wanted.

– I did not use a side seam for the ruffle layer. I used the entire width of fabric by the length I wanted for the skirt and only had the back seam.

– Shorter zipper: with the empire waist there is no need for such a long zipper. I ended the zipper about three inches below the empire waist and it was long enough to get my daughter in and out easily. The instructions for an invisible zipper were good, but I hadn’t done one in forever so the Coletterie tutorial helped fill in the blanks for me.

– Lining: My mom hand stitched the lining down on the inside of the dress. We also left the seam of the skirt and bodice upwards instead of ironing it down like the pattern calls for. That seam was then covered by the bodice lining.

– Hook at top of zipper: I left it off and it stayed closed just fine throughout the day.

This was the late night photo when we finished the dress Friday night – ahead of schedule!!

I added some silk flowers to both the bodice and the bonnet. I used this tutorial from Just Another Hang Up for the flowers.

The bonnet is a combination of several tutorials that I found online because I didn’t find a single one that was what I wanted. I got the shape from this one and the ruffle from this one.

I love how the combination turned out! The tulip sleeves, peter pan collar, and ruffle fabric made such a sweet dress. This may have taken more time to make than the time she wore it for, but I really love it and maybe someday this can be worn again. The wrinkles show she wore it most of the day.