Wednesday 25 August 2021

Candy Castle Bubblegum Dress and the add ons!

I got to try making the Bubblegum dress from Candy Castle Pattern Co as a brand ambassador for them and it is the pattern of the month this August with the code AUGUST. It is a beautiful wrap dress that can be made with woven and knit fabrics. So versatile!

For this dress I made, I decided to go with the Sarah Jane fabric that I have been saving. This is Children at play and its coordinate fabric with balloons. It's adorable!



The puff sleeves are done with elastic and I suppose if u pull it tighter, it will be closer to the arm but I am happy that it is slightly puffed out so that her upper arms are not "squeezed" - she really doesn't like it when her arms have elastics around them too. So this is great - a puff look without the tightness around the upper arm!


The great thing about a wrap dress is that the kid can wear it for much longer despite that fact that you make it in woven fabric. Cos this little girl has plenty of pretty woven dresses and one thing that bugs me is how fast she outgrows them. Woven clothes don't get worn as much and she outgrows them so much faster too. So it's a nice change that this is a lovely woven dress that she isn't going to outgrow just yet. 


This version is the basic bubblegum dress with an A line skirt that is sweet and simple and really fast to make. 

The recommended fabrics for this in woven include quilter's cotton (which is what i have here, corduroy for something thicker to wear over long sleeves (think winter wear coordinates!) or even light weight denim. For knit fabrics, u can go with interlock or jersey (size down for really stretchy fabric!) and even fleece (again for a cute cold weather coordinate!)

The dress itself can be lined on the bodice or it can also be finished with bias tape all around the wrap. This version I made was lined. 

New information! (added 17/3/2022)

If u like a really poofy swing dress, I tried the bubblegum swing dress add on which is a gathered, full skirt version with a contrast band (Can u see that the bottom of her pretty Hello Kitty dress is in black coordinating Hello Kitty kimono print?)

There's a lot of things I did for this dress to make it "special". Firstly, I picked the bias tape version this time so that it is not so hot to wear - previously the white was slightly translucent hence the need for lining but this fabric is perfectly fine to wear as a single layer. 


Then to add interest to the bias tape and make it uniquely ours, I used 2 different colors of bias tape in 2 different width. The purple is a beautiful dark purple with sheen satin bias that is a double fold 1cm bias while the pink is a cotton bias tape that folds up to about 0.5cm in width. I binded one side of the purple bias then used the combined bias to give the dress a contrast bias collar look. It turned out exactly as I envisioned. I was SO PROUD. The sleeves had just the pink bias and the straps were just the purple one. I think it looks perfect! 

You may be wondering. Where's the puff sleeves? Well, for the sleeveless look, I also used the Bubblegum parade maxi dress sleeveless add on. Hehe. Talk about mixing and mashing! There was so much going on in this dress already that I didn't want puff sleeves to distract from the other stuff like contrast collar. So going sleeveless was perfect. It was also ideal since this girl runs hot! 



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