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

2012 Christmas Cards

Every year we sent out a few dozen Christmas cards to our family and friends. When we just had one child, even just two children, we had professional (if you can consider the cheap coupon specials Wal Mart used to have "professional") photos taken. It was fun to dress the babies up in coordinating outfits and pick out something nice for David and I to wear.

But now, since our last attempt at professional pictures, we merely take our own and consider ourselves lucky if the children look only semi-miserable and only one or two are doing something like picking their nose or sticking their tongue out.

This year was no different. I took quite a few pictures of the children one afternoon last week. By the time we were finished the boys seemed hyped up on some invisible substance and the baby was cranky and exhausted.

Most of them are like the pictures you see above. We did get one or two possible "good" ones. I think we'll go with this one for our Christmas cards this year. It's not perfect but it gets the main points across: yes, the boys are bigger this year than they were last year. And yes, we have a new baby. Some of the people we send Christmas cards to do not even know about the baby so that should be a surprise for them. Ha.

For better or for worse they will go in the mail this weekend. And the boys and baby will not have to needlessly suffer through another attempted photo session. At least til next year.

Love,
Sarah