A Frock for the New Girl

A new girl just moved into our congregation a few weeks ago. She is a sweetheart, and (bonus!) speaks the same Chinese my family does. That made her an instant bestie. Just to make sure her move was as non-eventful as possible, she happened to time it within weeks of her due date. As in…she is expecting her sixth! child! any! day!

 

Never a group to miss a party, a few ladies sprang into action and put together a baby shower. (Even though this is her sixth child, it is a girl….and her last girl was born 9 years, and three boys, ago. She gave up hope somewhere along the way, along with all of her daughter’s baby clothes.)  Friends in her previous congregation had already gathered stuff for her, and given her lots of hand-me-down baby clothes, so she requested that if we were inclined to bring gifts…..could they please be things for a slightly older girl?

 

Originally, I intended to make one of Made by Rae’s Itty Bitty dresses, but I couldn’t find my pattern. (The pattern, by the way, is a free download on Rae’s blog, and is SUPER adorable. It is a dress that will fit right at birth, hence the itty bitty part. A few readers enlarged the pattern and sent it back to her, so now it goes all the way up to 3T, I believe. Anyhow, it’s an adorable, and simple dress!)

 

My train of thought went something like this. I’ll make Rae’s itty bitty dress! Oh, I can’t find the pattern. I could probably make another pattern from memory…I can find a small t-shirt and make the pattern from that. Hrm…making patterns. That reminds me…I DID make a dress pattern a few years ago!

 

And thus, I made one of my Pretty Frocks for the new wee one.

 

This was made from one of my husband’s cast-off dress shirts. I experimented this time, trying to keep the shoulders a little wider. In past versions, after making a rolled hem on both the neck and the arm hole, the resulting shoulder bit was only about an inch and a half wide. This time, I used some binding that I had leftover from a small quilt to bind off the neck. The arms were still a rolled hem.

You can see here, on the back of the dress, the original button placket from the shirt.

 

I lined some of the more ticklish seams with binding.

 

The dress, honestly, came out quite a bit BIGGER than what I imagined it would. The pattern was drawn up to be 2T, but…it still managed to button around my 4 year old. Oh well – the new little one can wear it for YEARS. Heh. (Kim, if you are reading this, bring the dress to me when your daughter wants to start wearing it, and I’ll hem it to the right length!)

A Facelift for the Living Room (2011, Thing 1!)

After Christmas, I was more than a little ready to move on. Make a little change. Shake things up a bit. I mean, the holidays were festive and all…but once Christmas is over, I want nothing more than to set my sights on SPRING. Down came the tree, down came all the snowmen and reindeer. Down came the stockings and the hangers. And out came the sewing machine!

 

I picked up this fabric at a Crate & Barrel outlet before I moved from one coast to the other, specifically to make pillows for our new couch. The new couch we hadn’t bought yet. Or picked out. Or shopped for. I was pretty sure it would be a solid, though, and…knowing us…it wouldn’t clash with a subtle blue print. I was right! (The fabric is MARIMEKKO. I’m not sure of the name…I can’t seem to find it online. Any MARIMEKKO experts out there?)

 

I vaguely referenced this tutorial from the lovely Su, at Vively Online, but since I hadn’t looked at the tutorial since she originally posted it…I can’t be entirely sure that I didn’t botch it up. Heh. (Su? Check my homework and let me know, yeah?)

The pillow forms are from IKEA, and are $7 each. In case anyone would like to make themselves some fabulously cheap Sofa Bling, I’ll put up a tutorial in a few days, with exact measurements for these pillows. I still have a few yards of red Chinese brocade that I picked up, also for pillows, at Pearl River in NYC before I moved. I figure a pillow can never have too many “dresses”, and besides…Chinese New Year is just around the corner. And nothing says SPRING like red, gold, and a house full of cherry blossoms, right??! (I have a really cool cherry blossom project in mind as well. Stay tuned!)

Happy 2011, y’all!!