Maddies year 6 Graduation Dress

My 12yr old has just had her yr6 graduation. Above is a picture that she gave me and then emailed me addressed to Mummy of the outfit that she wanted to wear to her graduation. Maddie is very creative. Her art, crafting and cooking skills are terrific. You can hand her any recipe and it always turns out yummy. She actually cooks dinner for the 9 of us some nights and always does a terrific meal for us. I couldn't change her mind about this outfit as I didn't like this outfit. I wanted her to wear a pretty dress but this is what she wanted to wear and she has very definate ideas about what she will wear and she can be very stubborn. Maddie is my 7th child and I only have two daughters.

She insisted on choosing her fabric so we went to spotlight to see what we could find. She found some Disco micro dot in lots of different colors. She chose a black, pink, purple and blue in the fabric as there was nothing printed already. I cut out just over 100 12cm squares out of the fabrics. I started sewing them together on my overlocker but it decided to start playing up again after recently being serviced so I just used a small zig zag stitch on the sewing machine. The overlocker is about 20yrs old so its probably time to replace it as its worked pretty hard all these years and untill recently always been reliable. I drafted the pattern rather quickly as it is just a straight shift with no shaping. I used a satin fabric as a lining which was a mistake as I feel a knit lining would have been a better choice. I have had a lot of work lately and being short of time I didn't think the project through properly. Its amazing how I will look at a project and see all my mistakes and yet Maddie was very happy with her dress and even more happy when at her graduation all her friends complemented her on what she was wearing as she was different to everyone else. The dress was worn with 2 tops and bike shorts that actually came down to her knees. She changed her mind on the leg warmers and the shoes to just wear thongs.Now getting her to stand straight, still and pose for a photo without doing something silly was an effort that cannot be imagined. I must have taken a dozen photos.