I actually MADE a dress! (4th of July dress)

The blog is in the middle of a make over.  As you can see. My awesome design team and IT super woman are working hard and fast.  So if you think things aren’t fluid right now, check back later. They will be epic and you will be in love. I promise!

And now I have the bumble – bee song in my head “Won’t my Mommy be so proud of me”.  Because my Mom, she can sew.  She can make adorable stuff with her sewing maching.  And until now I could make a blanket, which if you think about it…isn’t that hard (note: I said blanket not quilt).  So I bought the fabric a couple of months ago for a friend of mine to make the dress.  But I have a major problem with actually MAKING it to the post office and MAILING things out.

So by the time I realized I hadn’t sent it out, it was too late to send it out with out over-nighting it.  And the dress would have then cost me WAY more than I wanted to spend on it.  So what’s a girl to do in a situation like this? Unpack the sewing maching and pray she can figure it out on her own. Ok well not totally on her own.  I had the help from Baby Rabies, who pointed me to her tutorial that I referenced a few times a day.  (I had to break this project up since there were tons of other things going on last week!).  So, if you are interested I would check out her tutorial.  I am not going to type it out again, since that would be rather redundant.  But I do want to share pictures!  (of course!) of the steps I took.  (Note, when it says to use a safety pin…use a freaking safety pin!  It was a pain to pull the ribbon through with out it!). (Also, I am not a fan of the ones with elastic, because I’ve never worked with elastic but also because I wanted more control over how much it bunched).

So I used two different fabrics, which for simpleton me made me think a little more about which way to go about adding it.  I did a few things wrong at this step.  Like I didn’t measure anything.  I just sorta was like “well this seems like a good ratio.  It wasn’t until I needed to cut it so it would be the right length did I realize that I should have measured.  Luckily it was in fact a good ration.  And it worked out.  I would measure.  Know how long it needs to be total.  Do the cutting and measuring before the sewing.  It worked out this time. But probably not so much every time.  Lesson learned.

See I just sewed the two together.

Then I did was Baby Rabies told me to do and I hemmed the bottom. I did find it was a lot easier to fold and iron first.  I actually didn’t even pin this part.  After ironing I just went with it.

Then I actually measured the width.  Pinned.  And sewed (this is a riveting walk through right? ha ha)

I cut off the extra stuff.  You’ll notice there are two seams.  This wasn’t by accident.  I only happen to use one sort of stitch on my sewing machine, but I thought it needed reinforcement just in case she was rough on it.  Then I flipped it inside out to admire my tube for a day or so.  Then I flipped it back so I could get back to work.

The arm holes totally tripped me up.  I complained on twitter, I looked at the tutorial I was following.  And I pictured options in my head.  BR used an extra strip of fabric. Now I had extra fabric but I didn’t really fully understand what I was expected to do with it.  So I cut the arm holes like she said.  And looked at it for a day.  And then I just decided I would just fold, pin and sew.  If  it looked like crapoli, well I’d tweet her and find out what she was talking about.  Luckily it didn’t look bad, it actually looked better than I expected if I do say so myself.

Then I just needed to fold over the tops and sew so there’d be a little ribbon path way (technical terms here folks, technical terms).

(Notice I had already sewn but forgot to take a picture.  So I took it before pulling the pins out).

I am proud to say I paid attention to things like the stripes lining up well in the back.  And I did pretty well on keeping the polka dot rows in line.  I didn’t take a picture of me suffering through stuffing this ribbon through the ribbon pathway.  Because I did not follow her instructions and use a safety pin (didn’t have one).  And it was quite the opposite of easy.  But the end result is all anyone cares about right?  So here we go.  Here are some pictures of her modeling her dress.  (I wish I could have gotten better shots of it.  But she is not a “still” child.)

So, that’s that.  That was pun’kins 4th of July dress.  I did it.  And I can’t wait for Sophia to pick out material for her dresses.  Or her PAJAMA PANTS.  Because thanks to my Mom sending me the link to a pattern…I am going to try my hand at that.  In the mean time I bought three materials today to make 3 dresses with.  I also picked up a yard of this adorable material:

I’m going to wing my own pattern to make owl pillows.  That material will serve as the back and then the front will be an owl face.  I have enough to make a handful of them.  So I think I’m going to make one for every owl on the material.  I’ll let you know how it goes. lol

So what is stopping you from making one? (Don’t tell me it’s because you have a boy, because surely you know a girl baby that needs a beautiful dress!!)

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