A special baby dress and other outfits

My biggest project of the past couple of weeks has been a baby dress for my niece, who is turning 1 soon. I started with Winnie the Pooh fabric from Wanderlust Custom Fabrics. I bought two yards before I knew what I would be sewing. After it arrived, I looked around for a suitably ruffly dress pattern. I eventually settled on the Belle Rococo Dress by FooFoo Threads. I’ve had the pattern in my bookmarked patterns for awhile, and I figured it would be perfect. I love the result!

I made it a size larger than her current size, so hopefully she can grow into it and wear it for several months. She’s darling, and I ended up giving it to her a little early at Easter, where I got a few pictures.

I spent a lot of time on the dress so it could look great. I’m pretty meticulous with ruffles, so each tier took me about an hour, but they looked so even and nice. I hope it lasts well. The different height tiers are so fun.

My daughter had a birthday this month and I wanted to make her some dresses. I ended up using brushed poly fabric from a mystery box from So Sew English to make her a maxi dress. I used the Ellie and Mac Be Dreamy Dress pattern. It’s a cute pattern, but with the fabric being a bit see through, I lined the bodice. I like that better anyway with the weight of the maxi skirt. I also was afraid of the skirt being see through, so I did a partial lining with a white fabric I had that ended up acting like a built in slip. My daughter loves it.

I also have always really liked the Aria Dress pattern by Simple Life Pattern Co, so I used this opportunity to make her one with some beautiful cotton lycra from Peek-a-boo Fabrics.

Once her birthday was over, I started working on some clothes for myself again. I made myself some pants from a pattern I’ve used before, but I made a couple alterations after the last time I made it, and I don’t think they were a great choice. I’m not happy with the pants, so I won’t share them. But I have made myself two tops that turned out well. Both are modal fabric from So Sew English. The striped top is the free Laundry Day Tee pattern by Love Notions, and the lemon top is the Sienna top by Sinclair Patterns. Both are great and I’ll be happy to make them again. I’ve gotten lots of compliments on these when I wear them. Excuse my weird faces. I may stop smiling in selfies because I can’t make it look natural!

Next up I will be finishing another top that I cut out and working on pants again. I need to get my pattern figured out better so I can use some stretch twill that I ordered and make some shorts. I printed out a new jeans pattern and plan on using that as a base. It’s a curvy pattern and hopefully that will give me a better starting point than most patterns.

I also finished multiple purses for orders, but this one was one that I’m particularly happy with.

I made this from my own Curvaceous Clutch pattern. This is the Medium size, gathered overlay variation. I bought this lace online and wasn’t happy with the hue in person. My customer had a dress with teal green accents and she had picked a certain of my silks that is teal green before switching to the lace. So I bought green dye and dyed the lace. The first batch I dyed too much and it ended up too green. The second batch was perfect.

It’s hard to get teal to show up properly, but this picture shows the original lace at the top, the one that looked too green on the right, and the one I ended up going with on the left. I pinned them both to a side of the purse to help make my decision.