Another Little Dress

I made another dress for my granddaughter using McCall's 9207. I really like this one. I like it so much I'm a little embarrassed to admit how much I like my own work. It looks a little odd the way it's laying in this photo but the rick-rack is placed exactly on the waist seam.

I added several inches to the length and it has pockets. You probably can't see them in the photo.

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I added a ruffle to the first dress I made from this pattern, to make it long enough so here's that one. It's a bit of mess but it will be fine for a 3-year-old to wear for everyday play. (I plan to write a separate post sometime about my adventures with gathering - followup to my previous post on that topic.)

Gathering

Does anyone out there have difficulty with making gathers? This is one of the many ways in which, after literally four decades of sewing experience, I am still incompetent. I long ago gave up on the method recommended in all pattern instructions of a double row of long machine stitches because the thread always breaks. If it's just a short piece to be gathered, like a sleeve, I just make gathers with pins. For longer things like skirts and ruffles I do it with a running stitch by hand.

The little dress in the previous post turned out to be too short. Since I had quite a bit of the skirt fabric left over, the simple solution was to add a ruffle. The piece seems ridiculously long for a ruffle on a small child's dress so, feeling a bit lazy, I started trying to think of alternatives to hand gathering. I came up with what I thought was the brilliant idea to use hand quilting thread which is considerably stronger. So, feeling quite proud of myself I filled a bobbin and threaded the machine with quilting thread and did the stitching. I started carefully gathering but in a very little time the thread broke, as usual. It seems impossible that this happened. I was going slowly and carefully, not pulling hard at all and this seemingly very strong thread just broke! How is it that other people can do this but I cannot?