Tutorial: J. Crew Inspired Girls Dress

Well, here it is!  Like I mentioned in the previous post, I got overly excited while I was making this dress.  It was just too easy to make, and turned out so well, so there will be a lack of pictures here and there.
There are so many ways to take this tutorial and adapt it to your taste.  I used 3/4 inch elastic because that's what I had laying around.  If you want to get it closer to the J. Crew dress, go a little thinner.  I also made my straps a little wider, but you can easily suit the thickness of the straps to your own taste. 

Your materials:
Fabric
Elastic
Sewing Machine
Needle & Thread (for your flower)

We will start by making 2 panels of fabric. Measure around the chest. Add 1 inch to this measurement.  This measurement will be the width of each panel.  Measure the length you want the dress by holding your tape measure from the chest down to the point you want your dress to end.  Add 2 1/2 inches to this measurement, and that is the length of the fabric panel you need to cut out.   My little darlings chest measurements were 21 inches and the desired length was 19 inches.  So I had 2 panels that measured 22 inches wide and 21 1/2 inches long.
Put aside leftover material for your straps and flower. 

Put both panels together with right sides touching.  Pin the sides of your dress and sew 1/2 inch from the edge. (I did 1/2 inch because my fabric was kind of fraying)

I trimmed the edge and put it back through the machine with an overcasting stitch to give a nice finish to the seams.

Your dress should still be inside out.  Fold over 1/4 inch of the fabric at the top.  Wrong side should be touching wrong side.  Run a stitch around it to keep it in place.
Fold your fabric again 1 1/2 inches.  Sew around 1/4 in. from bottom of fold but leave an opening for the elastic.

Now sew completely all the way around, 1/4 inch from top of fold.

Move on to the bottom of the dress now.  You can finish your hem anyway you like best, but I like simple, so I first used an overcast stitch along the edge.  Then fold 1/2 inch.  Stitch it 1/4 inch from the bottom edge.

Thread your elastic through the top opening and pull both ends out each side.  Stitch them together using a zig zag stitch a few time for strength.  Pull the elastic and dress so elastic is evenly distributed, and sew the hole for the elastic closed.

Here's where we start to run out of pictures.

Make the straps.  Decide how thick you want them, and make a tube.  Turn it right side out and press.   You will need to adjust the length of the straps to suit your child.  I made them long enough to be able to sew them onto the stitches already created around the elastic at the top.

Your dress should hopefully look like a dress now.  We need to make the flowers to finish it off.  Take your scrap fabric and cut it into 3x3 squares.  You will need to cut 4 or 5 squares per flower.  The dashes on the diagram above represent the cut marks.  Cut your squares one at a time, and place them on top of each other, overlapping and rotating each square.  Grab your need and thread and put a stitch in the middle to hold all the squares together.  Grab the middle and pinch the bottom to form the flower.  Place a few stitches through the part you pinched to keep the shape of the flower.  Now stitch that to your straps.  I made 2, but you could go crazy and put as many on as you like. 
Congratulations, you just saved $80.