A strictly Dress

[mimimomma]

My 4 year old dd and I have been watching strictly and without exception she has asked me to make her a dress like every celeb that appears. Clearly she's after something long and glitzy, and my machine skills are adequate, but I need a starting point for this dress. I don't want to spend lots of time on this, as it's really only for dressing up to watch strictly in. Any ideas?

I have a branch of this shop where I live and the fabric I've linked to is available online in other colours....little girls adore it...it's much sparklier in real life and though it's a bit sheer, it's v easy to sew with.

I made my smaller DD some Jasmine Harem pants out of it in turqoise and they're still going strong now. If you got some of this fabric and made a simple dress out of it, she'd love that.

For pattern I would simply bodge it as I went...for ease, I would buy some wide elastic, then measure it round her upper chest...just beneath her armpits....right round and pull it a bit tight. Sew the elastic together at the ends so you have a "loop" of elastic and then I would sew the sparkly fabric to the elastic with a slight gather...just pin it with a little fold every inch or so.

then hem it together down the back and cover the elastic with some broad sparkly trim like this and make a couple of shoulder straps out of their ruched ribbon trim...I think that is also elasticated so it will keep the frock up and on.

If you wanted you could stitch some feathers or a glitzy flower on one side of the chest ...the shop has all those things.