more back to school outfits! next up is something for miss nora.

when it came time for nora's back to school dress this year i wanted to do two things:

shop my stash
use fabric i would wear myself, or have worn myself

now the reasoning behind the first point is pretty obvious; i'm on an endless quest to have less fabric and the only way to do that is to sew through the fabric currently in my stash.

the second point requires a little more explanation. i know a day will come when my nieces won't want handmade outfits from aunt maggie, and as the oldest nora will probably get there first. so I'm starting to be really careful about not making her anything that could be seen as "baby-ish". i figure by making her things out of fabric i like they will be seen as more grown up and buy me a little more time.

enter a navy eyelet I got four years ago at stonemountain & daughter. back then i used it to make myself a dress that I wore for victor's graduation from cal.

I lined that dress with a navy lawn, also from stonemountain & daughter. however in the years that since I've developed a fondness for contrasting linings (and I used up that lawn years ago) so I wanted something different here. I opted for a teal kona cotton, which created what i'm calling a "subtle contrast".

from the distance it looks like a standard navy dress, but up close you can see the teal peaking through which i think makes it more interesting.

if this teal cotton looks familiar it's because i used it for the accents on neela, maya, and etta's flower girl dresses and etta's mini southport back to school dress.

the pattern is a classic: the fairy tale dress from oliver + s, which i fell in love with all over again when making maya her flower girl dress for my wedding.