Teenage Daughter's New Dress

Back in 2008, I wrote a post about sharing my sewing machine with my (then) eleven-year-old daughter.  Seven years later, and I'm in the same situation again. She wants to make this dress. Her original plan was to cobble together a couple of different patterns to get what she wanted. She told me it wasn't going to be hard. 

The pattern she had planned to use had an unsatisfactory neckline, so she started over -- and drafted her own project from scratch.  (Prior to giving birth to this child, I was under the delusion that I knew how to sew clothing. Now I just stand back and watch in awe. Because she drafted her own pattern from scratch!)

She needed some expendable fabric to check the fit and design, so I let her dig around in the sewing room for the ugliest sheet she could find. I didn't know I had anything quite that ugly....I'm sure people have made real dresses out of worse, but YIKES!

Those darts and sleeves and pintucks....they all fit perfectly. And did I mention that she drafted her own pattern like it was no big deal?

I should probably mention that Alex hasn't taken any kind of sewing classes, ever. She's sewn with me and my mom and the quilt guild at church. Until a few months ago, she was too busy with other things to mess with a sewing machine very often. Then there was another dress I didn't have time to help her make and she plunged in and did it herself....and now there's THIS.

And, because this is our house, the back of her pattern pieces has what appears to be a monk shooting a scary creature out of his sleeve. Either that, or it's a pipe like in the Super Mario games.