King's Day Geranium Tunic

April 27th was King’s Day here in The Netherlands. It’s the King’s birthday, which is usually celebrated with much revelry, hoisting of flags and the conspicuous wearing of traffic cone orange, the symbol of the Dutch royal house.

Would you know it, no one in my family owns clothing in that shade. (Yeah, traffic cone orange is not the most flattering color.) Still, I decided to make Elora a suitably orange top. If anyone could pull it of, it’d be her.

I happen to have a really vivid orange in my stash created by Carolyn Friedlander. I got the idea to make a Geranium top with a ruffle, instead of an empire waist from this tutorial. So, I measured Elora, lengthened the bodice and added a floral ruffle.

When I tried the almost-finished top on Elora, I realized I hadn’t prewashed the fabrics. Doh! This top is sure to shrink, probably most in the length. What to do? Add more length!

I found a lightweight voile to add as a band at the bottom of the ruffle. You can see I attached the band much like quilt binding. I sewed it to the right side of the ruffle hem, pressed/wrapped/folded it around and finish-stitched it from the right side of the work, exactly in the seam between the orange floral and the pink band.

Honestly, I think the band might have made it worse - even more garish than before. But, well, she’s three. She can be cute in pretty much anything. Elora was super-excited to wear it.

On King’s Day we went for a ride into the countryside, out to a nature preserve we hadn’t visited before. It was bright and sunny. Oh, and we did spot others wearing vivid orange!

Here she is enjoying a stroopwafel after lunch. Ha!

Before washing, the top wears like a tunic, but I think it’ll shrink up. Should still fit, thankfully, since she has room in it all over at this point. Fingers crossed!