My attempt to make outfit with the Secret Squirrel for July.

Have your heard about the Secret Squirrel ? It's not a new Disney character and nothing involves with the funny Chip and Dale. The Secret Squirrel  is the a challenge hosted by SewPony and Straightgrain.  He is the new hero for all seamstresses!

This Secret Squirrel will deliver 5 acorns of sewing inspiration each months to bloggers around the world. The willing bloggers have to create an outfit for their child based on acorns of inspiration.

See? The five acorns for July are not easy to cooperate. But the first blogger, SewPony done the mission beautifully hear , WOW!

The good news is anybody can sewalong and create outfit from the same inspiration acorns and share their creations on Flickr group. Sound like fun? For me, the challenge accepted!

Upcycled tee-dress for July Secret Squirrel.

The idea for create outfit from these five acorns just hit me the last week of July. I rushed up to finihed this dress from surgery 4 tees together. 

Each acorns inspired me as in following...

No.1 Mandarin duck : It's my major theme for the dress, the mandarin duck color. And it's the reason to convince my little girl to appreciate the dress without "pink" color. She love animal, so when I show her the image of colorful mandarin, she easily admired the dress to imitated that duck.

No.2 Not done : this will apply to acorns no.4

No.3 The Japanese paint by Ando  Hiroshige. I try to bring Japanese style to this outfit by using the Japanese sewing pattern. 

I use this pattern

No. 4 Pleat : This is my first time to do pleat and first time to attach the cap sleeves. These sleeves made of my old tee's sleeves. Pleats give it smaller shape and fit for the girl dress.

No. 5 Ella Fitzgerald and Louise Armstrong : I choose Summertime, the song that both of them duet. And made the summer dress (as the weather here scream "SUMMER" almost the yearlong). The pattern was from the CUCITO summer 2013.

Summer dress

I'm not 100% satisfied with the result and this is my lesson not to rush for sewing in any project again. I think the fringe part of the dress not clean finished. I've got the idea of fringe skirt from Made it & Love it. My girl love that idea and want me to make her one. 

I'm not sure it's because my orange tee was too thin or I cut them too wide so they didn't turn out as the purple layer. Do you think if I re-cut them to smaller strips or anything else to do to improve that fringes ?, I'd happy to hear your recommends.

The girl love to run and feel the fringes tingle around

Well, at least the girl approved her new summer dress. Perfect fringe or not, she do enjoy to run around with them. What else that the mother will ask for? :) 

Thank you for stop by!