Just learned it is "badminton" not, "badmitten"

When Oliver + S announced their spring patterns I knew immediately I would be sewing up a few

badminton skorts. I had been tossing around the idea of frankenpattern-ing a skort for a long time but was too lazy and now someone has done it for me! Which really is best because I could fiddle around for ages and not come up with such a solid pattern as this is. I even did the previously unheard of act of purchasing the pattern for full price plus shipping directly from the website. I usually wait and buy it from my LQS but knew from past experience it would be early summer before they got it in and I just couldn't wait that long! (Luck would have it they did have it in stock last time I visited, but whatever, I regret nothing)

 The skirt itself is adorable and sewed up fast and with no tricky little bits to make me mad or force me to get out the seam ripper, which usually happens the first go round with a new pattern. Truthfully the scallops are a bit shoddy, but I am going to blame the fact that I was using the dress scallop tracing template instead of the skirt without realizing it, and had to fudge it when things weren't matching up. Thankfully I am not a perfectionist so I don't care! I bought the smaller sizes of the pattern, hoping to squeeze both girls to one pattern sheet so I wouldn't have to buy both sizes off the bat. Big sister L really could have used the 5t for a bit of growing room, but the skirt fits fine, and I'm hopeful it and future versions will last her through the summer.

 Most importantly she loves it, although she keeps pestering me for the white top with pink trim she ordered to go along with it.  I know I will make this pattern over and over again, with scallops, without scallops, and I'm thinking of adding a bit more width to make it more twirly, an important factor for all little girls.

While I would have bought the pattern for the skort alone, lucky me it also came with an adorable dress/top pattern too! Those little shoulder ruffles kill me, both literally and figuratively, the whole yoke deal gets a tad bit tedious, but the end result is so worth it I plan on subjecting myself to it again. Even with so much going on up there the directions are very clear and I was able to whip this up in one night without touching my seam ripper once. Once again, shoddy shoddy scallops, but this time I couldn't find my water soluble pen and thought, what the heck, the skort scallops didn't look that bad, and plowed ahead just eyeballing it. While we are at it, I know you aren't supposed to point out your flaws, but who else noticed that I totally cut the ice cream cones going across the dress instead of up and down? Facepalm. Just when I think total newbie mistakes are behind me I go and do that. I definitely wasn't going to trash a yard of fabric for nothing, so I went ahead and I'm still proud of the end results.

This is her smiling nicely for the camera face

 It looks adorable on my little ham and I am so pleased. I'm thinking of hand stitching the bow closed as it didn't take long for it to come untied, and am planning a clever elastic hack on the next one inspired by this version on flickr. I've already got endless versions of these pieces in my brain, now I just have to buckle down and sew them up!

I am soo in love with my new dress