Blue Cottage Dress

The ties have decorative stitching to coordinate with the other trim.

The sleeves have a strip of the calico, plus some decorative stitching.

When I was finished with the dress, I found the bodice was too plain, so with a contrasting thread, I used some of the decorative stitches on my machine to make a design.

A zig-zag scallop, a thick straight stitch, and some little cross-stitches were used.

Decorative stitching sews up the hem.

Here is how the bodice decoration was done:

First, I used a teacup to trace around for some gentle curves.

Then I laid tracing paper over the teacup curves, traced the design, cut around the tracing, and....

...flipped the tracing paper over and traced around the edge to get the lines on the other side. From there I just stitched along the lines, then the next decorative stitch or thread color was a presser-foot edge away from the last line, etc.