Polka Dot Dresses

Greetings from Nashville!

While my mom went to the Titans game today, Bryan and I stayed home to get some last minute crafting done. Well...Bryan wrote thank you letters for his med school interviews and I crafted. But he was pretty creative with some of those notes...so that counts as dual crafting.

I made these two little dresses for my youngest cousins. Tomorrow we pack the car and head to Harts Creek, WV. Heard of it? Probably not. The closest large town is Charleston. Most of my extended family lives in West Virginia. It has been a couple of years since Bryan and I have made the journey, so we are both very excited. I love, love, love sewing children's clothes so I couldn't let the opportunity to make matching dresses for two little sisters pass by. I wish I had a sister (hint, hint...Mr. Sabbe's brother)

I tried to make the 8 year old's a little more "big girl" in case she doesn't care to dress like a 4 year old. I used my favorite stitch along the bottom of hers and let the lining hang a couple inches below the outer shell of the dress. (excuse the blurry photography...still figuring out my new present)

And since it's winter we included some little white turtle necks. Hope they fit! I'm gauging by pictures...probably not the best idea, but I'm a crafter not a planner...so seriously on keeping the fingers crossed.

I'm not expecting to have Internet during our stay with my grandmother so have a very Merry Christmas!

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Baby Day Gown

At the beginning of the summer I started going to a Smocking Class every Tuesday. I had been wanting to learn to smock for a while and one of the ladies in my bible study volunteered to give us all lessons. From the beginning I realized smocking is not easy, involves tiny needles and very little stitches, and when you mess up a row you have to start all over. Long story short, smocking is not going to be a lifetime craft of choice for me...although I think smocked dresses are the cutest. Here is Bryan's attempt to document my dislike of smoking. After yelling out five times "I hate smocking" he took a picture so I would remember. I tend to get craft amnesia once I'm finished with something.


Three month later I am almost done with the smocking and now I need to piece the dress together. I wanted to take preventative measure to make sure I don't mess the dress up and absolutely lose my mind so I came up with this easy baby day gown to get a little practice for the real thing. I think it turned out very cute so I wanted to share and maybe if you are attempting to piece together a smocked dress in the near future you can have a little practice too.

Materials: Ignore half of the things in this picture. All you need is one yard of material and matching bias tape, double folded, and a couple eye hooks.

Cut out:
Two 9" x 7" pieces (sleeves)
Two 12" x 22" pieces (back panels)
One 24" x 22" (front of dress)

You pin the sleeves on the front and back panels and sew down about 6", leave the rest of the sleeve loose.

So you have your sleeves sewn to your front and back pieces.

Now to connect the body of the dress they key is the French Seam. My friend's mom showed me how to do this at the baby shower I threw a couple weekends ago and it is the best sewing thing I have ever learned and so easy, I can't believe I'm just now learning this one.

What you do is sew the dress together (raw side out) See below.

Then you flip the dress to the inside, iron that seam down and then sew in again from the inside. This neatly captures that raw edge and you have nice, clean seams.

Now that you have your body pieces put together start pleating and pinning around the neck line. Sew with a straight stitch around the neck and remove the pins.


Take a piece of bias tape, measure 1.5" longer than the diameter of your neckline. Iron the raw edges inside.

Pin around your neckline and sew.

Same for the bottom hem and the sleeves.

Sew in two eye hooks sets on the back .5" extra bias tape that you left to close the neckline. You could sew in more if you wanted to allow for different neck sizes.

Ta-da...A Baby Day Gown! I ended up doing a zig-zag stitch around my neck, bottom and sleeves to finish it off. But you can leave this step off. Another thing I was going to do, but didn't, was sew in elastic in the bottom hem so it would be tapered at the bottom to cover the little legs. I'll try that on my next one. If these directions are vague at all feel free to email me. Happy Day Gown making!

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Announcing My Spring Line...

Front

Back

I finally made the dress! I have made little dresses before, but never with this new pattern. This is actually my trial run on cheap fabric. My fun Amy Butler fabric has not arrived yet, so I thought it would be a good idea to practice on some less fun fabric. Although I think the frogs turned out very cute. I do wish I had a loaner kid to try it on and make sure it hangs right and isn't itchy or anything where I surged it. I was a picky clothes kid, so I try to relate to picky clothes kids when sewing.

Maybe I'll bring one to the church nursery on Sunday. Although I might be permanently banned from helping in the nursery if someone catches me trying random clothes on their kids.

I want to alter the pattern a bit so that the dress can be reversible. But as far as the Cooper Young Festival goes, I'm one dress down, a whole lot more to go. I'll probably hate these things after this. My poor (future) girls will have to wear store bought clothes...which I'm sure they'll love way more.

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