Help with first dress pattern please

[reikizen]

Please help, I am an awful sewer but am really keen to improve! I would love to make some summer dresses for my girls but have no idea what might be an easy pattern to get my confidence up.

If you have little or no experience of using patterns it needs to be as simple as possible. I too am a novice and recently bought a (simple, so I thought) pattern to make a fancy dress outfit for my daughter. If my mum hadn't been there to help I'd have thrown it and the sewing machine out the window after the first hour! Patterns can be very confusing.
I'd pick something like a shift dress, no sleeves, ruffles, collars or zips. Pick easy fabric.
Good luck.

I'd use something like this or this. If you go to your local fabric shop and ask for an easy girls summer dress pattern then they should help you. Or you can just browse the children's sections in the books, and pick one labelled "easy". Make the same dress more than once in different fabric whilst you build your confidence.

I bought one last summer that I think was a Simplicity dress and labelled Easy. It was only when I was about half way through that I realised that the instructions were written as if the child were making the dress! But it did mean they were particularly clear and easy to follow

How are you getting on, OP? I was going to suggest similar to what the others had: pattern books and look for "easy" patterns.

And I always like to suggest this, but I don't know how many people ever listen (I wouldn't), but before you get started, try doing some "drills". Get some scrap fabric, assign yourself some skills to get perfect before you reward yourself with the actual sewing project. When I was learning (back in school) we had a drill-sergeant of a Home Ec teacher and I honestly think that repetitive training helped. (and you can make it more fun for yourself than I had as a gel!).

Sure, it's an investment in time, but it's worth it for your confidence, the quality of the finished project, not wasting The Good Fabric, and ultimately taking less time on the project itself, as you'll be more efficient.

Simple and essential skills are: darts, curves, straight seam in various stitch lengths, sewing on the bias, reversing at the beginning and end of seam.

And every new project you start, read the pattern instructions ahead of time, find out if there's a new skill you haven't learned, then practice that a few times on scrap fabric before doing it on the outfit.

Good luck!