If you have a little girl in your life, chances are she loves a certain queen who sings a certain captivating song, and once it is heard, the brain just won’t let it go. I have three little granddaughters who role play Frozen at least once a day and would watch the movie every day if they were allowed. Even though the song gets stuck in my head, I love watching them sing with so much emotion while play-acting the role of Elsa. It seems they can’t go up a flight of stairs without bursting into song! So I decided to make some dreams come true and sew dress-up costumes for them for Christmas.

Melinda had a bridesmaid’s dress from several years ago hanging in the closet that was the perfect color. She wasn’t planning to wear it again and  knowing the girls would LOVE it, gave me permission to transform it.

I removed the zipper in the back and opened the seam to the hem. I made a horizontal cut across the dress between the waist and bust line. Since there were eight panels in the skirt, I also opened the seam down the front of the dress to the hem. Then I had two pieces of skirt for making two dress-up aprons. I folded the skirt panels in half lengthwise and made an angle cut from the top edge to the side to fit under the arms. Then I folded the top of the bodice of the apron under 1/4 inch twice and top stitched. Each side of the apron skirt was also folded under twice (up to the arm opening) and top stitched. To make a casing for ribbon ties, I sewed wide seam binding to the arm opening (right sides together) and folded the seam binding to the back side and top stitched it into place, leaving openings at the top and bottom edges of the seam binding for a casing.

Seam binding casing for ribbon ties at arm opening.

I found some crocheted snowflake ornaments made by my grandmother that had never been starched to make them stiff for hanging. They had been embellished with sequins and beads and were perfect to sew onto the front of the apron bodices.

I threaded a fancy ribbon up through one arm casing and down through the other arm casing to form the neck of the apron and the waist ties. I wanted the apron to be one size fits all, so this makes it easy to adjust.

To help keep the ends of the ribbons from pulling through the casing, I sewed some fancy “ice crystals” pompoms that I just happen to have in my stash, to each end.

The apron looked beautiful, but I had a snowflake stencil I purchased last spring that was begging to be used. So I stenciled snowflakes onto the skirt using white fabric paint. Depending on how the light hits the fabric you can see the snowflakes well or hardly at all– makes them feel more magical.

I can’t wait to see these on the girls. Next post I’ll show you some accessories I made to go with the aprons. Now to work on the Anna Apron! Shh…don’t tell the girls!