Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! When I saw the Peppermint Swirl dress by Candy Castle Patterns, I was looking through all the lovely photos of pretty dresses sewn up by other seamstresses and I instantly knew what I had to do. There’s plenty of pretty out there, but the panels in the skirt? It seems to be my default trigger to instantly think how fantastic things would look in black and white (however I wasn’t 100% sold on it because I saw the beautiful rainbow one in the pattern listing and felt conflicted!). I wanted to sew up a beetlejuice-inspired dress, and with Eddie’s Helena Bonham-Carter hair it all feels a little Tim Burton to me! How did I get away with sewing a black dress for the princess? She’s super into Monster High lately so I just told her it was a Monster High dress ^_^ I honestly did not think she would fall for it at all but she LOVES this dress. We took the photos in the morning when it was all misty and moisty and foggy and then off she went to her daycare dad’s house - totally refusing to get changed into something a little more appropriate for playing and climbing in!

The pattern is crazy easy, really! I was really impressed with the instructions, everything is so clear and straightforward with plenty of patterns so if you’re a brand new seamstress wanting to sew something a little fancy you should definitely think about this dress! There are fourteen skirt panels in this really cool swirl shape and sewing them together was a little tedious (so was cutting them out) but it really wasn’t so bad. You can see it taking shape almost immediately and once you have the skirt sewn up it’s just heart eyes from there. Even the bodice had me swooning; the sweet little petal neckline and the cute little sleeve flounce. Eddie poured over it as it was laid out ready for the shoot and commented on how much she loved literally every detail.