I Sewed With Elastic Thread!

First, thank you all so much for your really in depth advice about makeup. Based on your responses, I went out and got an eyeliner pencil, mascara and light colored eye shadow and some neutral lip gloss in a shade called "nude". I found some tutorials online about how to apply eyeshadow and basic makeup. So, I tried it all out. I got some ivory concealer and already had some clear powder.

I don't think I will use the 3 colors of eyeshadow the tutorial I found said to use. I got a package that had 2 colorways, each with 3 shades. I tried the lighter of the 2 colors using the various colors for browbone, eyelid and crease as per the tutorial but it was waaaaaayy too much. The very light violet by itself looks okay, and the eyeliner looks sort of okay (almost too much though) and the mascara looks okay. The lipgloss is a huge improvement over the lipstick - thanks for suggesting that! It's enough to make me look like I am dressed up, but hopefully not enough to make people stop and think "oh my gosh she looks so weird she doesn't normally look like that does she??"

Anyway, I also got some new fabric to make a different dress for the wedding. I had wanted to make my own dress anyway, but couldn't find fabric I liked/could afford and so in desperation I went out and got that bright green dress. It *is* a cute dress but guess what? I found some fabric I liked! And it was only $1.50 a yard in the Wal Mart bargain bin. It's a really pretty pale silvery-blue-green. It is super lightweight so I'm lining it and am making the Grecian Sundress from the free Tanit-Isis pattern.

It's so cute when she pulls up to a standing position because she looks impossibly tiny to be standing on her own two little legs. 

It calls for shirring with elastic thread - something I had never done before. I got the thread and was scared to try to use it. I like the shirred look but usually obtain that through other ways, like casings and elastic, or stretching-elastic-as-you-sew-it or something like that. I had a little bit of yellow calico left from a project I did this week for a friend from church and so I decided to try out the shirring technique on a small garment since it wouldn't be as big of a waste if it didn't come out right.

But it *did* come out!

I was excited and thrilled. I am still nervous about using it on my dress but I hope it comes out like I plan. If not, well, I always have the bright green dress I can wear instead.

For the dress I cut a narrow rectangle approximately double her waist measure in width and from her armpit to just below her knee in length. I hemmed the top normally and then shirred for about 4". I attached a ruffle at the bottom of the skirt (double the width of the skirt) and then made little ruffled shoulder straps to attach at the top. It seriously took an hour, maybe. So easy! But such cute results.

Love,
Sarah

Stripey Ruffly Baby Dress ~ Sneak Peek

Anne's dress is coming along. I did not end up getting a roll hem foot because I was too impatient to wait to get one, so this dress is coming out looking a lot clunkier than the original dress, which you can see here (didn't link to it in the last post; bad me.) 1922-1924 White Ruffled Cotton Lawn Dress.

The color and ruffles reminds me of baby lettuce leaves!

Mine is not an exact copy. It is made of striped voile instead of plain white lawn which was originally a sickly hue of greenish-lemon-yellow that I dyed with a box of teal RIT dye. Because this dress is being made for a baby instead of a child who is several years old (the owner of the original dress was born in 1919) I could not without extreme difficulty shrink the proportions of the dress properly. It was soooo hard to make 1" wide ruffles! I just could not go any narrower without having the hems look larger than the center portion of the ruffle! So I have just 5 ruffles on the skirt, set 1" apart, instead of the 7 ruffles the original dress has. And my treatment of the sleeve ruffles (single instead of double) and the neckline ruffles (which I may, very possibly may, take off and redo) are different.

But I am actually really happy with how it is coming out. True, tiny things bother me. Like a few of the skirt ruffles are not exactly the same width as the other ruffles. But really who is going to notice? So I try to reassure myself.

The baby tried it on last night and it looks so adorable on her. Of course, she looks adorable in anything (at least I think so) but the color is great for her and the style is feminine without being uncomfortable. I remember being so miserable in scratchy lace and net-underskirted-dresses when I was little! I loved the frilly dresses but always thought the price for beauty was uncomfortable-ness. ;) The size is a little big, on purpose. The waist is not fitted and the skirt goes all the way down to the tops of her teeny pink toes. She should be able to wear it for a while.

For some reason the neckline ruffles bug me. I think it is the header on the lower ruffle  - it just kind of jars me. Not sure how to go about fixing this. Unless I just bind take off the top ruffle, bind the neckline and add a ruffle with a header above the lower one. That may look better. 

I still need to probably redo the neckline ruffle and then finish a few seams, add a few snaps to the back opening and then the dress will be done. I have plenty of fabric left over so I want to make a matching baby bonnet to go with the dress. And maybe a sash?

Speaking of my little lady, she turned 8 months old yesterday. I can't believe she is already this old. She is a true joy and I can't imagine our family without her now that she is here!

I'm still kind of in awe I even was pregnant and had a baby - it all still seems surreal to me. We all love her so much. She's bubbly and funny and happy and looks so much like her daddy. He's pleased at least one child looks like him. The boys really do not. 

I think she rounds our family out rather nicely! I need to buckle down and finish our dresses today or tomorrow. I still need to finish the sash for my own dress and decide on a style for Anne's bonnet.

Love,
Sarah

A Vintage Tablecloth Baby Dress and Bonnet

This dress is either very absurd or very cute. I cannot decide which, but at any rate it is sewn and finished for little Anne. I made it from a vintage Christmas tablecloth my mother gave me last week.

I actually used a real, true, honest-to-God pattern for this dress. Peter's mother gave me several patterns right before Thanksgiving and this was one of them. It is a cute little style with a circular skirt sewn to a short yoke. The pattern is for a short sleeved dress but I merely lengthened them a few inches to make long sleeves. I used the 6 month size and although it is a bit roomy I think the size is actually quite good compared to other patterns I have used. It seems infant patterns in general just run HUGE! This one didn't.

It's just the print that gets me. It's just a bit too big and too gaudy, I think at times. At other times I think it looks pretty cute and kind of 1960's. So, I don't know. It is what it is and after this Christmas season Anne will never be able to wear it again since she will have well outgrown it by next Christmas!

The little bonnet was my own creation. Or experimentation. I'm working on a simple fitted bonnet pattern/tutorial and this was my first attempt. It came out almost how I wanted it to. At any rate, it fits Anne well and looks cute with the dress! And she will actually keep it on her head!

It is super fun to make little dresses though. They take so little fabric and can be whipped up in an afternoon or two! This coming week I'll be making Anne's Baby Hobbit dress for the Hobbit movie which comes out next week! I'm so excited about that - both making the dress and seeing the movie!

And tonight, Anne can wear this dress to a Christmas party we are going to. We are supposed to dress up as a Christmas song and Anne could possibly go as Amy Grant's "Baby, It's Christmas" (although her song is not exactly referring to a child, but still).

So, that is what has been up on the sewing front. I did make a tiny stuffed mouse this week and petticoats and a dress for Anne's doll but I have been lacking in motivation to get on the computer much this week. There is just so much to do this time of year, computer-time is not high on the priority list!

Love to you all!

Sarah

A Pumpkin Dress for Anne

Back in the Spring, when I was shopping at garage sales for little girl clothes, I came across a little long sleeved shirt that had a big orange pumpkin on the front of it. It was a larger size than I thought the baby would need for the fall but I snatched it up anyway. My father's favorite color is orange and when I was little he called me "pumpkin". I had to get it! It would be perfect for his first granddaughter.

Now it is full autumn and I have been wanting to have Anne wear this shirt before Christmas is upon us and pumpkins and harvesty colors will be a thing of the past. I couldn't figure out how to incorporate it into an outfit for her, though. She doesn't have any pants that match the color scheme and I prefer to keep her in dresses, anyway.

The other day I pulled out an enormous floral shirt that my grandma gave me back when I was pregnant, thinking I could use it during my last weeks of pregnancy. Even then, it was far too large! But I liked the material so I kept it, thinking I would cut it down into a dress for the baby at some point. When I pulled it out I realized that there was indeed orange in the print so I decided I would combine the pumpkin shirt with this shirt so Anne can finally wear it.

It was an easy thing to cut off the bottom of the pumpkin shirt. There was a small yellow stain on the lower portion of the shirt anyway that would not come out with washing. Then from the front of the enormous floral blouse I cut a rectangle for a skirt.

I sewed the floral skirt piece into a tube, using a french seam to finish everything off nicely. I hemmed the tube,

gathered it to fit the waist of the pumpkin shirt,

and sewed the two together. Easy! (why hadn't I thought of this before???)

The waistline was still enormous for the baby so I sewed some elastic to the waist seam of the dress to give it a bit more shape.

All done!

Anne obligingly smiled for pictures but it was very difficult to keep her hands out of her mouth. She is in that "I must gnaw everything" stage and the other day she surprised me by swiping some mashed potatoes off my plate during dinner and stuffing them into her perpetually-open mouth. Then she cried for more.

Oh, and aren't these little knitted socks just darling?! I found them at the thrift store the other day. 25 cents was a great deal. They are a little large but that just means she can wear them for a longer period of time!

Love,
Sarah