Bella Sunshine Designs Sweet Lilly Pintuck Dress & Tunic Pattern Test Results

Okay, guys, here it is. This, the Sweet Lilly Pintuck Dress & Tunic is possibly my favorite thing I made my little gal. I know I’ve thought that before, but it’s just so pretty, and I’m so thrilled with how it turned out. I made the Coffee Shop Lace Dress last week, and I felt that it was a great pattern that would translate well into a Christmas dress with some red velveteen I have…somewhere…in my fabric stash. When I had the opportunity to test this new dress from Bella Sunshine Designs (affiliate link), I was really excited. I had some red cotton with white flowers printed on it that I found…you guessed it…at a thrift store, and I thought it would be the perfect fabric for this dress. I also had some white fabric sitting around that I figured would work nicely for the ruffles and lining. 

This dress took a while to make, I won’t lie. I wanted it to be perfect. I took about 15 hours to make the Sweet Lilly Pintuck Dress & Tunic from start to finish; that time included the time spent hand-sewing the lining to the bodice and hand top-stitching the upper part of the arm bands (because I made the 6 month wide, 18 month long dress, I figured the arm bands would look much nicer if I did them by hand and not attempt to force my sewing machine to accurately top stitch in such a small space. I also had to take out my pintucks on each side once because I didn’t initially allow enough seam allowance in a few of them. 

Even though the bodice of the dress is a bit “fussy,” it’s a great pattern for intermediate sewers for fall. Melissa Prendergast, as usual, does a great job with instructions and describing steps, so even though there are a lot of techniques used (understitching, pintucks, edgestitching, full-bodice lining, etc.), the techniques involved are well-described. The ruffling technique went well, and although I seam ripped the places where the bodice meets the ruffle on top a few times, I was able to get everything lined up to perfection. While I wasn’t 100% happy with my buttonholes on the back, I am still in love with this dress. It’s hanging on the wall in my living room where I look at it every day. I made a matching headband, which I’ll write about later in another post. 

For now, I’m super-excited about this dress. I have some owl fabric hanging out that I think I’ll use to make the longer version of this dress. I may also hunt down some of my brown floral fabric to make a fall/Thanksgiving version. 

Through Labor Day weekend, the Sweet Lilly Pintuck Dress & Tunic pattern is available for $5.97 at 40% off; in fact, all of the patterns at Bella Sunshine Designs are on sale through the weekend at 40% off. 

Here are more pictures! Please share pictures of your favorite recent creations in the comments!