A wee dress

for a wee girl who’s turning 1!

I know the lighting in this picture is horrible.  But it just epitomizes the experience of sewing late into the night, the excitement of seeing the little dress you’re making take shape, having no one to share it with, so you snap this picture in the dark. 

The baby girl is turning one tomorrow.  We don’t do big parties, but I thought it would be fun to make her a dress.  (Plus, I always work better with some sort of deadline looming.)  Of course, I knew that once I started, I probably wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle.  So, I stayed up a little too late.  *yawn*  I had to at least get to the point of attaching the skirt to the bodice, and seeing what the dress looked like all pieced together.  So, once I got to that point, I was ok with putting the sewing machine away.  I was almost up late enough to catch the royal wedding.  I still need to sew on the buttons, make the buttonholes and decide if I want to attach the lining of the bodice by hand or by machine.  That's on the agenda for this evening, after the kids are in bed.

I used the Oliver + S bubble dress pattern, and I’m really happy with the way it turned out.  I have to say, making this dress makes me feel like a real sewer.  I mean, it has a lining!  And these cute little cap sleeves that just come out ever so slightly.  So many cute details. 

The bubble effect is created by attaching a piece of elastic to the hem of the skirt, and when I was doing it, it reminded me of all the times I watched my mom do the same thing.  She wasn’t making bubble dresses, but she attached elastic to pants a lot.  Pulling the elastic and sewing over it to create the gathering effect, I felt like I’d been doing it forever. 

There are definitely some mistakes in there.  I should probably have centered the flower pattern on the bodice when I was cutting the bodice piece out.  And I hate that the underarm seam is not lined up with the seam of the skirt.  My mom always said it was really important to line up the seams.

But overall, I think it’s the cutest thing.  (Isn’t that the fun of sewing kid’s clothes.  Anything so wee can’t NOT be cute!)  I keep pulling it out of the closet to look at, and I think if my husband rolls his eyes one more time when I do that, they will stay like that forever.