Hoddie Dress

Two years ago, I fould this super cute dress on dawanda.de (the German equivalent for etsy.com). At that time I put in on my favorite list to maybe order the dress for my little girl. 

Now, two years and lots of sewing projects later, I found it again and still loved the look. So, I decided to give it a try and sew it myself.

To have a starting point I took a hoodie-sweater pattern that I had and did a lot of alterations from there. Looking back, I am not sure if I really needed the pattern, but I had to start somewhere, right? 

Next, I took one of my daughters shirts to adjust the body width and eyeball the shoulder width. 
 

After cutting my pieces, here is what I got (2 hood pieces and 2 body pieces). I left a seam allowance where needed - no seam allowance at the front of the hood and at the arm holes.

After closing the shoulder seams and hood seam, I put some contrasting fabric around the arm holes and on the hood front. Before attaching the hood to the body piece I checked if my daughters head would fit through the neck hole (it did not!!), and I cut the neck hole much larger before sewing the hood to the body. Next was closing the side seams and then another fitting to determine the length. 

My body piece turned out to be 29 cm long with a 5 cm waistband in contrasting fabric (same width as the body piece). For the skirt I cut my fabric 1.5 times the width of the body piece. The skirt turned out to be 24 cm long after hemming. I took all those measurements after a couple of fittings with my little model.

And here is the super comfy, super cute summer dress! I am glad the dress turned out exactly the way I was hoping for, because I am waiting for a super cute fabric delivery from Germany. I can´t wait to make another one of these!!