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Sewing everyday princess dresses is easy and make great Disney bound outfits! Here we’ll show you how to sew princess dresses and more from beginner level girl’s dress patterns, Polly Tiered Peasant Dress and Ruffled Neck Daydreamer Dress Pattern, both in sizes 2 to 10 years. (Polly actually starts at 12 months!)
Polly is a really versatile pattern, that you could use three of these four dresses. The pattern includes views for both a full, 3-tiered, twirly dress with a full sleeve, and a twirly single-fabric skirt.
This red Minnie inspired dress was made with a now-retired pattern and just a single boltwidth (42″ – 44″) for the skirt portion to keep it less full. You can easily do this with Polly, or make it full per the pattern. Add eyelet lace for Minnie inspiration and shir the sleeves to give them a little ruffle at the bottom.
For a Rapunzel inspired dress, you would lengthen the bodice by a few inches and make a corset-type look by cutting diagonal slice off the front bodice piece and adding seam allowances to each side to make a V-shape in the center. You can’t really see it in the photo because I cinched the ribbons up too much. The new center piece is cut on the fold and the side pieces are cut separately, with one reversed (see below). Slip some small 1.5″ pieces of folded ribbon (I used a fabric tube – ribbon would have been better but I didn’t have any) between the center and side pieces before you join them, press to the center, and lace it up! Then sew up a slightly longer split-front overskirt with trim.
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| NOT to scale! Just to give you an idea of the cut. |
For this Jessie from Toy Story inspired cowgirl dress, I split and re-joined the bodice in a similar way, but I cut a slice off the top instead of the center, and then added rickrack over the seam. I also mixed up the lengths of the tiers to feature the top two and minimize the bottom one (just add them together so you know how long they should be overall, then switch them around as you wish. For example, if you make a 7″ tier 5″, add that 2″ to one of the other tiers.) I used yellow, white and brown cottons, chambray, and a cow print.
This last one I made from my ruffle-neck dress pattern, Daydreamer Dress for Girls. I cut the neck ruffle just a bit wider, at 6″ wide, and then ran a hand running-stitch through the front center to gather it – and voila – those princessy shoulder swoopy things. I lengthened the bottom ruffle to 6″ (remembering to subtract the amount I added from the skirt length!) I omitted the sash and lengthened the bodice to make up for it. Then I added an elastic-ruched overskirt made from a lightweight, low-wrinkle gingham. I’d detail the process for the overskirt but I really, really winged it and said a lot of bad words along the way. Basically, I started with a piece of fabric longer than the underskirt and the same width around, marked off four stitching lines, and stretched and sewed clear elastic down the stitching lines. Then gathered and attached as usual. While this would work with many kinds of fabric, I think anything that wrinkles in the wash (like quilting cotton) would be a mess to try and press so the fabric choice here was key.
I put the normal length of elastic in the neck, but I am thinking I might go back and make it a little longer because I know the owner of this is going to want to wear it off her shoulders!
That’s how to sew princess dresses from a simple pattern! Remember, you don’t need a bazillion dress patterns, only a few good ones and a little imagination! Happy sewing.
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