Have you made an Anna Dress, McCall 7000

[fortifiedwithtea]

If you have, share my pain. Appliques. Aaaargh!!!!!

I've made Elsa, dead easy. Then I volunteered to make her friend an Anna dress. I suggested the green coronation dress, nice and easy - printed skirt fabric can be bought on ebay. No such luck Friend said could she have the blue one please.

Had a top tip from shop where I used to work.|To avoid raw edges and not get rippling of fabric when trying to iron on webbing to polyester - don't use Bond-a-web and the like.

Instead stitch with tiny hem allowance iron-on interfacing to cotton applique fabric, iron-on side to right side of fabric.

Cut a slit in interfacing and turn the right way out.

Iron so interfacing bonds to back of applique.
this part I haven't got to yet
Baste appliques to dress. Satin stitch on sewing machine in place.

Sounds simple. But the flowers have 9 dots and 9 petals and 9 stems. Each flower has 4 tiny leaves. That gives a grand total of 63 fiddly bits.

Is this just more trouble than its worth?

Anyone had good results using bond-a-wed on polyester? And did you satin stitch over the top of leave the raw edges?

TIA

[lucysmam]

I think I'd use fabric glue for the fiddly bits if it was me.

Or try and find them ready made on ebay maybe to cut down on faffing.

[fortifiedwithtea]

Yep, I'm a great fan of ebay. I found a seller offering an embroidery panel for roughly £3.75. Expensive but ideal for just the bodice. I'd have gone for it if I'd been making the coronation dress.

I hadn't thought of glue, thanks for that idea

[lucysmam]

I used fabric paint for the panel on the coronation dress and the pattern on the skirt - did not know you could buy it Could have saved myself hours of painting

[cate16]

I'd give the bond-a-web a go if it were me.
I'm not familiar with the dress, but could you use felt for the flowers/petals? (although not washable- so maybe not)

[fortifiedwithtea]

I just thought I'd give you an up date of how it turned out

For the bodice I appliqued a round the pieces and then went over with satin stitch. It took hours and I admitted defeat and bought some Bond-a-web.

Used Bond-a-web to decorate all of the skirt using a low setting on the iron because I didn't want to scorch the very cheap satin I'd used for the skirt. By this time I was absolutely sick of the dress and didn't stitch around the edges.

The Bond-a-web held up for most of the day but some pieces were peeling by the end. I did volunteer to have the dress back to stitch the appliques back in place but I think child's grandma is being given the job.

Why are there never any good short cuts?

[lucysmam]

Eek, a school mum has asked me if I'll think about making one for her dd. Might be better off saying no and directing her to the Disney shop on this occasion.