Rachel's Baptism Dress

I decided even before we were blessed with our first baby girl, that I wanted to make their blessing dresses and their baptism dresses. These are such significant events in their lives, I wanted to make it a little more special by making them something with my own hands, rather than going and buying something from the store. So, although I'm sure I could have found dresses that were more elaborately and more professionally made, I hope that my girls will look at their dresses and know that their mother made them with her own hands out of her great love for them.

For Rachey's dress, I wanted to make it "girly cute," meaning that I wanted it fancy and a little more formal than a regular church dress, but I also didn't want it to look like a little white prom dress. I still wanted to capture her cute little 8 year old personality and let her stay a little girl. So that was my objective with this one, make it beautiful, and white, and special, but keep it simple and little-girly cute.

On the bodice, I added little ribbon embellishments and flowers to dress up the simple design. The fabric I chose, was a nice simple white that has a little sheen to it, but not a lot. The fabric is machine washable, which I had to look very hard to find, but I wanted her to be able to wear it to church afterwards, and not just on her baptism day!

I dressed up the waistband by adding two rows of ribbon, and a satin rose which is simply pinned on so that it can be taken off when laundering. Here she is wearing her baptism necklace and beaming on her special day.
The back was just a simple ribbon bow. To add to the fullness of the skirt, I added two layers of gathered tulle. Then, to dress up the skirt a little, and to add that playfulness of a little girl, I added a slightly gathered ruffle. She loved it...that night she spinned around and around to watch the full skirt ruffle around her. Too cute. Here she is trying it on for the first time! She was so excited, because it was the night before, and she had no idea that I had made it. I did all my sewing in the middle of the night in order to surprise her. It was worth all of those hours of lost sleep.

Lainah's Blessing Dress--A Personal Masterpiece

I have so much to learn when it comes to sewing. Sometimes, I get so frustrated because what I envision and what actually gets made are usually two different things. My knowledge and skills don't match up to my expectations I suppose. But, this time, with Lainah's blessing dress, it all just sort of clicked. It isn't perfect, but I think it's as close as I've ever come to designing something beautiful in my mind and then making it come to life in my hands.

Lainah is our third daughter, and each of their blessing dresses have been different. Different patterns, different fabrics, and just different designs. With each, I tried to make something that I felt would reflect a little bit of their sweet, fresh from heaven personality. With Lainah's I really wanted something to show how special our 5th baby was to us. I wanted her to know that mommy spent just as much time and effort on her dress as I did the first. I wanted it to be intricate, but also delicate.

I couldn't possibly go through the directions here on the blog, it was too complicated, but basically, I found a dress pattern that fit as closely to what I had envisioned in my mind as possible and that's where I started. Then I had to add layers, or improvise in order to stick to my own design for her.

These little flowers and ribbon made the front so cute, and they also went really well with the skirt fabric, which was an organza with flower embroidery. So beautiful.
On the back, I put the little white satin buttons, and brought the ribbon around her waist to tie in the back, leaving long ribbon tails going down the length of the dress. I also kept the sleeves unlined, so that you could see her cute little baby arms underneath. I didn't want the dress to overpower the baby, I wanted it to be delicate like she was. Here is the back view of the dress. I added a strip of ribbon around the bottom of the skirt to match the ribbon on her waistband. And the front view. And here is our beautiful little girl modeling the dress herself. So perfect.

A New Dress for Christmas

I spent a lot of late nights working on this dress, but it was worth it on Christmas morning when my little girl opened up the box and pulled this dress out.

I used McCalls pattern #M5742 , and really liked it. It was more complicated than other patterns that I've used, but I really liked it. The dress bodice is fully lined, which I like because then children who don't like itchy tags, seams, etc. don't have a hard time wearing the dress!

The dress also has an underskirt with a tulle ruffle added for fullness.

The sleeves are elbow length, which I really like for the winter months...and I found some crocheted lace to put along the neckline, waist and hemline of the skirt.

I really think that my favorite thing about this dress is the color. I again went away from her traditional favorite colors of pastel pinks and purples and instead went with a color that would compliment her hair color and complexion. She looks gorgeous in this dress. The olive green color just looks so beautiful with her honey-blond hair and brown eyes.

A Little Sewing

Rachel's birthday is coming up and so since she is getting so tall all of a sudden and all of her dresses are getting so short...I decided to make her something new! Because it's winter, I decided against her favorite colors (pastel pink and pastel purple) and do something else. I'm a little nervous that she won't like it as well as I do.

I decided to make her a jumper out of some cute corduroy with a fleece jacket to go with it. My thoughts were that it would be cute and cozy for the winter months!

I used a Simplicity pattern, #4384. I have used this pattern for skirts, the pants, the fleece poncho...and now the jumper and jacket.

I like this pattern a lot. It is pretty simple to follow, but has a lot of style.

I changed the style of the jumper skirt from what the pattern showed because I wanted it much longer than the pattern...and I didn't have enough fabric to cut the desired length in the A-line shape that the pattern suggests. I made the little flower/bow embellishment detachable so that she can wear the jumper with just a plain turtleneck and the flower/bow...or take off the flower/bow and wear the jumper with the jacket.

I love, LOVE the jacket. It is made from soft polar fleece, and it is fully-lined...making it nice and comfortable. I also changed the straight-edged sleeves to bell-sleeves. I think that Rachey will love them!

Peasant-Style Top

This has been one of my favorite tops for little Brooklynn. It is so cute on her. She has a deep plum undershirt that she layers underneath and it accents so well with the plum-colored flowers.

This was another project that I started out by looking at a pattern and then deciding to change it up a bit to fit more of what I had in my mind. The pictures really don't show how cute it is.

Again, because she is in preschool, I was trying to make something that would move with her while she was busy playing like preschoolers do. This top fits nice and loose, and layers well.

Pants for Brooklynn

I seem to go through "hobby phases" where I'll spend a lot of time doing one of my hobbies...and then get tired of it and switch to something else for a while. I'm not sure what that says about me. Anyway, right now must be a sewing phase because I've been doing a lot of that lately.

These are some jeans I made for Brooklynn. I sort of used a pattern to start out with...and then just bagged the whole pattern thing and did my own design. They look so cute on her. She's in preschool, and so I wanted her to have some fast, pull-on pants that were loose-fitting so she would be comfortable while playing at school. These have worked out so well that I'm going to make some more.

I added some fun accenting fabric to the bottom for cuffs.

And for the side pockets, I added some ribbon to coordinate with the green cuffs, and then used the embroidery function on my machine to add some flowery leaf designs around the edges.

Fleece Ponchos

So fall here in the east is my favorite season, and it's the perfect weather for sweaters, fleece pullovers, etc. These ponchos for the girls took a total of one hour for both and about 2 yards of fleece. A very fun, fast, and easy project!They wear them all the time because they are so soft and warm...just like wearing a snuggly blanket to school. Oh...and I made me one too...couldn't resist!

Pajama Party

These little pajamas were such a fun project.

The top seemed to run a little small, so next time I'll have to make that adjustment so it fits Rachey a little better. Overall though, a fun project and good pattern!