Blessing Dress

When my mom visited us back in early August right after Etta was born, she did a lot of sewing for me. She fixed pant hems, re-sized a few of Justin's work shirts, finished a little pinafore dress I had begun and much more! Thanks again Mom!

On top of all that, we devised the plan for Etta's blessing dress, shopped for supplies and patterns and began the actual dress.

We had no real idea of what we were looking for when we went. And, to be honest, our ideas were sketchy at best when we left. But we were armed and dangerous, with a bag full of beautiful eyelet fabric, some sheer pink ribbon, a Butterick Pattern #B4964, an Australian Smocking Magazine, some delicate tiny lace, blush pink embroidery floss, and tiny pearlescent buttons, Whew!

(the smocking article I used is on page 42,

the little denim jacket)

We ended up taking elements from the different patterns and things we liked. My mom is a sewing genius, and can really manipulate patterns, she also sized it to fit Etta perfectly.

The truth is my mom did all the hard work! She made the bodice, it was her idea to put the eyelet fabric on its side there, which was a really nice detail. The sleeves are exquisite. She cut the last inch of the Eyelet lacy bottom off, and sewed it on as lace, to match the bottom of the skirt. That way she was able to use the portion of the fabric that had the lace put in it, on the sleeve and it all worked more cohesively. Then she gathered the lace we had bought, (I would never had thought of this), but it really made it that much more rich. Then she hand sewed the lace to the neck. She made the little skirt placket and did the button holes, and made the lining. Basically the truth is she made the dress. I love it!!!! I had her sign the lining skirt and date it, and I am going to embroider that into the dress for Etta.

Okay, so if she did all that what the heck did I do? Good question, I watched and held the baby mostly! Then after she went home, I had a finished bodice and the skirt fabric. I took the skirt to a fabric store and had them pleat it for me so that I could hand smock it. (That is the embroidery over fabric pleats. It was the old fashioned way to create stretch in fabric before they had elastic. It is also very beautiful.)

It was so fun to do, I plan on doing it again soon. (In fact, that version of the magazine had a dress that would be prefect for Etta's first birthday) We decided to fly out to Utah and chose to have the blessing there with our family. It was perfect cuz my Mom was able to help me finish putting it all together, then I strung the ribbon through the skirt and tacked it in place. Here is the finished product:

I also went out and purchased that funny little bonnet. It was already smocked in white. So, I smocked over it in the same colors as the dress, so it would match. And replaced the existing ribbon with the same ribbon we had on the dress.

I also made a special white blessing blanket. For those crocheters out there it was so easy and is really quite pretty. I got the idea from my friend Jennifer J.'s grandmother. Here is the basic pattern. Slip stitch the length of the finished product. The second line and all following rows: all you do is single crochet, triple crochet, repeat all the way to the end. I started and finished each row with a single crochet. That is it. Technically I ran out of time. The blanket is not quite finished. But I plan on binding it of with a light pinkyarn, in a little scallop!

Technically these are Etta's 2nd month birth anniversary pictures. We had a lot of technical difficulties. Crying babies, crying, crying, bad light and I tryed three seperate times. I have decided that they are good enough. All I really need is one good picture and I have pics of her in the dress, and she'll have the actual dress, good enough right? (Okay, so I may try one more time...later) Anyway, here are the pics.

P.S. I have decided that for each child I plan on making a special blessing outfit for each of them to keep and have as a special childhood memento.

Cute little chubby fingers!

Here are some of the details, I just love her little arm in it,

especially that little dimple by her elbow!

This is what tummy time looks like when we don't use the boppy pillow.

It sounds like a very MAD screaming baby! I just think the picture is funny!

Worth Every Penny

... all 25 of them.

When I first moved to Fort Worth I was on the lookout for good second hand stores. I love thrifting I've been doing it since high school. You should see my collection of 60's and 70's clothes (me: sigh of contentment)! Anyway after asking my friend Amanda I was told about this awesome store that has 25 cent days. That is right, all thing 25 cents. But she couldn't remember the store name.

Well, I got busy and pregnant and the store slipped my mind, that is until my other friend Sharla came to church wearing a cute shirt that she had altered. She got the idea from this blog. It was too cute, and I told her the next time she goes I was going with her.

We planned on that next Wednesday. Unfortunately it got a little late and Sharla couldn't go so I ventured out on my own. I brought home loads of great things including two perfect pairs of slacks for my husband to wear to work (.50 total for BOTH). But, I also got a lot of dresses for my self, because I don't own any I can feed my baby in. And later I will show the other things I bought to alter.

Today I altered one of the dresses just to make it a little cuter. It was going for the football player look with big old shoulder pads. Seriously, why were shoulder pads ever popular?

Before:

There were slits in the back that went a little to high. The front had a collar and longer sleeves.

After:

For the front, I removed the collar, shortened the sleeves and added a ribbon around the bodice and bottom. Then in back, I sewed up the slits. I am going to wear it to church tomorrow.

Onesie dress

Justin went to scout camp about a week or so ago. Because we only have one car that meant I was house bound, pregnant, and slightly crazy for 2-3 days alone, with no one to talk to. So I started projects.

One of which was this onesie dress.

I received some cute little dresses as gifts that were built around a onesie so I thought it would be fun to try and make one.

Here is what I used, and did.

• a onesie (I used a small so that size is what these measurements reflect)
• a strip of 14" x 44" eyelet and solid white fabric
• 1/2" elastic, approx. 15-20 inches
• A random button
• about 20"-30" pink 1 1/2 ribbon
• Yellow ribbon for base of skirt and waist
• pins
• sewing machine
• needle and thread
  

Onesie and fabric cut to approx 14" x 44"

I just eyeballed the cut of the onesie, so that the waist is a little higher.

This allowed for me to make the bloomers.

This is the bottom half of the onesie. I just turned over the top edge and

sewed a 1/2" seam pocket for the elastic, threaded it through and closed it up. Done.

Next, I gathered the eyelet and solid fabric together with one loosely stitched seam.

Then pulled it tight to gather the top.

(I don't have a fancy machine, so we do things the hard way!)

Then I sewed the back seam together.

I centered the back seam of the skirt with the back of the onesie top, and pinned the 1/4's around to make sure it was even, then just sewed it in place.

Make sure you have good sides to good sides.

That gave me the basic dress the just needed to be hemmed.

I could have stopped there, but why?

I made this little embellishment. I don't know if there is a special way to make these, so I just fooled around until it worked. This is what I did. I sewed on the inside a loose gathering seam pulled it tight the spiraled it around a center point and secured it with a need and thread.

Then I went through my trusty button tin, and found this cute extra button from an old outfit's extra button pack and sewed it onto the center.

I added the yellow ribbon around the bottom and center of the dress just to clean it up. and lastly tacked on the little pink rose. And here are the final results:

Oh the details.

(Actually, the cutest detail will be the baby Buddha belly tucked in this little number!)

And here is the sneak peek of the other project I started to make, but haven't finished. It probably won't happen for a while. But it is going to be pretty cute. Although I am already thinking of some changes.

This is another of the old 50's patterns! Love it!

Pattern Resizing

Justin's mother saved me her mother's patterns. I love them. I spent the other day, going through all the little girl dress patterns making sure I had all the pieces. Well, that got me all excited to sew, and I am always needing a good project to keep me busy. So today I made this: (the little blue dress)

Isn't it adorable! It reminds me of the Kennedy's, it's from that time and fashion- and is just so classic.

There was one problem. The pattern was for a size 4, and I wanted to make something she could wear sooner than that. I researched online and found a fabulous tutorial, and have some images for you who would like to try it themselves.

Since I don't have a little model to try it out on, I looked up all the basic measurements. I found one perfect size chart here with all measurements, that helped me to double check my changes. And one other children's size chart that I had to convert from metric.

Once i had the info I needed to do the work, I found:

• sharpie
• architectural fodder paper (thin tissue paper)
• tape
• sewing gauge
• scissors
• pins

Once I had my supplies together, I checked the back of the pattern for the size measurements according to the pattern. Then I wrote out the size changes and figured what the difference in inches needed to be. (this is also where this chart came in handy for figuring proper armhole depth and shoulder to edge of neck measurements, later after I made the changes, I measured the changes to make sure they were correct).

Step 1: Trace existing pattern onto fodder.

Step 2: Once you know how much space you need to subtract (or add), you need to think about

dividing this amount in half for the front and back. Then divide that by half again, since that piece will be on both sides.

Example: The chest measurement difference I needed was 2 inches total.

Which means I need to remove 1 inch on front / 1 inch on back.

The front piece is cut out twice, so the 1 inch needs to be halved, 1/2 inch removed from each of the two pieces equals one inch.

Here is the pattern being cut to remove that 1/2 inch.

When you cut the stripe down the pattern you only overlap it 1/4 of an inch on both pieces, because that will equal 1/2". I also removed that half inch from the front neck facing. To check my work I flipped it upside down on top of the changed pattern to see if the length was right.

(refer to the tutorial if confused)

On the children's measurement chart I noticed that the shoulder width was also needing to be smaller, so I took out 1/2 and inch there, by over lapping it 1/4" inch.

The second image show how much I had to take out of the armhole. This was a big difference, all at once. I overlapped it 5/8 inch, to remove the 1 1/4" inch that was too much.

Since I removed that space form the sleeve on the front and back I needed to do the same to the sleeve pattern piece. I also shortened it, about 1 inch, just cuz, I didn't want it to be too long. The dotted line, is where I drew the new sleeve bottom.

I repeated this basic process on the back piece. The only difference was that the facing and back were one piece so I had to remove that 1/2 inch from the facing portion as well. On this image you can see an arrow for all the areas I took space out. Lastly I removed 2 inches from the length. According to the pattern you just added or subtracted from the bottom, so that is what I did here. I recommend doing this very last, because I didn't and when I began removing width, it messed up the hem, better to just wait til all the other changes are made.

I taped everything like mad so that I wouldn't have to waste more paper to copy the pattern onto in order to cut it out.

I used some old lilac fabric I had and lace. I just need to buy some buttons for the back. The pattern took about 3 hours. It wouldn't take that long a second time, but I had to figure it out a bit! And I haven't sewn clothing from a pattern in years. But this was SO fun!

And two more- I might change out the little buttons on the front for bigger ones. What do you think, do they seem too small? (that was all I had on hand)