Two!

Baby girl was due in May, but she decided she wanted to be an April baby and came three weeks early.  As soon as she was born, she cried out to let the world know she was here, and then she started rooting around for food.  Two years later, she is proving to be just as feisty as ever.  She knows what she wants and has no problem letting us know, too.  She wants to do everything her brother does and loves to play with him in his room.  At one point, he drew a sign that said “no babies” to keep her out, but the next day he took it down, and she was back playing in his room.  I figure she must have charmed her way back in somehow.  And, oh, how she can charm you.  I mean, who could resist that face?

 
We didn’t have a party for her birthday, but since I made her a dress last year, I thought it’d be fun to make one for her second birthday.  She wore it for all of 30 minutes, but it was cute while she was wearing it.

 

A while back, I fell in love with this little romper and bookmarked it for later reference.  I didn’t want to do another romper, though.  And at this age, what is cuter than a little dress on a little baby girl?  I used this pattern from Sew Sweet Patterns, but instead of the long sleeves, I made petal sleeves.  The petal sleeves turned out to be really easy.  Ok, so I used a pattern, but some patterns can be really hard.  I scoured the catalogs at the fabric store to find a dress with petal sleeves that I could add to the dress, and I found one.  I guess petal sleeves aren’t really in style anymore.  I like the old-fashioned touch they give the dress, though.

 
This fabric is a cotton voile, which is so soft and silky.  But because it was so soft and thin, I decided I’d line the whole dress.  And to make things even harder on myself, instead of putting the two pieces of fabric together and sewing them as one (which would have been the easy way), I wanted to make it so there were no exposed seams on the inside.  This requires a lot of coordinating.  Hello, seam ripper!  I sewed pieces on incorrectly a few times and had to take the seams out.  Because the fabric was so thin, I was afraid I’d ruin it with all the seams I took out, but I think it held up ok.

I have to show off the back.  See how the the two sides overlap just perfectly and the flower pattern is intact?  That was my goal, but it was probably a lot more luck than skill.

 

Since the lining was kind of a pain to do, I have to show that off as well.  See, all seams are enclosed.

 

Even though I've seen this fabric combo on that romper, I still debated and second guessed whether it would look ok as a dress.  But I'm really happy with how it came out.  I love this dress.  I know, it's not very practical, especially for a two-year-old who loves to run and climb.  But at least I have these pictures...

And big brother managed to get into the photo shoot, too.

 

Just so you don't think she poses nicely for photos all the time, this is actually what the majority of the pictures look like:

She kept the headband on for a very short amount of time, because apparently, I had put it on her incorrectly.  This is actually the correct way to wear the headband:

Oh, baby girl, you always make us smile.