The Sew and Tell Project

Whether you are looking for Halloween inspiration or not, kids of all ages like to play dress up. One of the first chapter books our children read is Little House in the Big Woods. Both of our daughters (now 8 and 7) devoured the entire series. It wasn’t long before one of them requested that I make them Laura costumes to play Little House on the Prairie.

The girls accompanied me to Jo-Ann fabrics and picked their calico prints. We selected bleached muslin for an affordable pinafore.

For the dress, I decided to use the Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop Perfect Peasant dress. The Perfect Peasant dress is a great pattern for a beginner sewer and is very versatile. For the bonnet, we used the Bluebell Bonnet from Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop. I have made several Bluebell Bonnets and can’t wait to do a more detailed write-up on this pattern.

Finally, for the pinafore, I used a pinafore pattern I already had in my stash: The Storybook Pinafore by Tie-Dye Diva. I added a few inches length to the pinny, and finished the armholes with bias tape instead of flutter sleeves. If you have the Sugar and Spice from PAB, that has also been successfully modified into a pinafore.

I sewed the Perfect Peasant as drafted except for the skirt pieces. I measured the height of my daughter from shoulder to ankle, and compared it to the final finished length of the dress. I added several inches length to the skirt piece based on the difference in the length of the finished project and my desired longer length.

I started at a point at the top of my rectangle piece that matched the pattern instructions, and then flared it out to 41″ on the bottom. See picture below if that doesn’t make sense. Basically, I made the skirt an a-line. Please note that the skirt pictured below is cut on the fold.

I then used the piece I adjusted to cut out my second skirt piece. The top measurements of the skirt piece, match the pattern dimensions given. The bottom is significantly wider. This accommodates the stride for one walking in a floor length dress.

With our costumes completed, we decided to take a big weekend trip! Stay tuned for my next post to hear about our adventure to the Laura Ingalls Festival in Walnut Grove, MN.

Teaser photo: My oldest DD holding my youngest DD as Baby Carrie.

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