Oh, Baby!

I AM FINALLY DONE WITH THE ENTIRE BABY OUTFIT!!  Did I mention that I am super-ecstatic about this?  Today I finished the second headband:

And the dress!!

Front view of dress:

Back view of dress:

And, because I needed a model & couldn't resist, I enlisted my old teddy bear to show off the entire outfit (although he's not wearing the bloomers because they're not visible under the dress & they're way too big on him).

Outfit #1:

Outfit #2:

Outfit #3:

I'm DYING from cuteness over here!  I am so amazed at how well all of this turned out.  I never in a million years thought I would be sewing anything, let alone an entire baby ensemble.  

I am going to go relax, clean up my mess of a sewing room, and take a break from sewing for a couple of weeks!  I have spent weeks working on this project, and I am in a bit of sewing overload right now.  I'd like to thank both my co-worker (thank you Mary!) and my sewing teacher (thank you Nancy!) for helping me understand the pattern directions for this project!  The dress instructions were difficult to understand and I appreciate their help!

Designing on the Fly

Today's goal was to make the baby hat and hopefully start on the second headband.  The hat seemed to be a breeze at first.  It was looking like I was going to finish it up well ahead of when I expected to.  But then I almost finished the sewing and flipped it right-side out to complete it (all the sewing was done on the inside while it was inside-out)....and it looked terrible.  I know I followed the pattern steps correctly.  It was just....a bad design.  Ick.  I could not give this to my best friend for her baby! 


Let's review: the hat in the pattern is supposed to look like this:

It basically looks like an upside-down tulip, which seems like it would be really cute on a baby.  What I sewed resulted in a puffy, bloated tulip-y mess.  So I had to improvise (need I remind you that I am still a novice sewer?!?)  It did take me a little while to work out what I was going to do and go over it a few times to make sure that I had my plans straight.  Basically, I flipped the hat inside-out again, cut off all of the scalloped bottom edges of the hat, and made the hat look like a long beanie-type hat.  It's the best I could do with my limited sewing & designing abilities, but I think it's pretty cute:

Not bad for having to redesign it on the fly, huh?  Once the hat was all rounded away (bad joke, sorry), I did start on the second headband but that will be completed another day.  And I intend to finally fix the snaps on the dress as well!

One Tiny Step Closer

I am THIS CLOSE to being done with the baby dress.  Having never used hammered-on snaps before, I ended up destroying more snaps than I needed, so a trip to the store is in order to buy more snaps.

However, I did make one of the baby headbands!  This headband is adorable.  Do you see the tiny bow?  I mean, DO YOU SEE the tiny bow?!?  It is SO cute!  (For comparison, it's being modeled on a clothes hanger; The headband is about 1 inch wide.)  It wasn’t too hard to make.  I think the hardest part was figuring out how to turn fabric tubes inside out.  I’m pretty sure I did it the hard way and will try a different tactic when I make the second headband.  I also hope the headband isn’t too big.  Again, I had to turn to the internet for baby measurements; however, I didn’t realize that while making the headband, you end up stretching it a little while you are sewing it, so I hope it’s not too big.  I will try to make the second headband a little smaller.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find more snaps.

It’s Blooming Up Cuteness!

Well, I did start the dress first.  However, I got stuck on one part of the pattern instructions and got frustrated, so I made the bloomers instead today!  (I don’t understand how the directions for the dress are so hard to understand, yet I was able to make the bloomers without any difficulty.  *sigh*)

Front:

Back:

These bloomers are just TOO cute!  However, not having an actual baby to measure, I had to do some research to get this done.  When I first started this pattern, I wasn’t sure which size to pick.  The pattern wasn’t very helpful either, since it gave approximate weight for each size and did not give approximate age for the sizes.  A friend suggested that I figure out how old the baby would be during the summer (since this is a summer-y outfit), and look at baby clothes in stores to see how many months old equated to approximately how much weight.  Upon further investigation, it appeared that I needed to make the small size of the dress & bloomers.  I’m so glad I asked my friend about it; I was originally going to make the medium size, which would have been too big for the baby to wear.  I also had to do more investigation; the directions for the bloomer waistband stated to measure the baby’s waist for the amount of elastic to use.  Again, since I don’t have a baby to measure, I turned to the internet to figure out measurements for a 6 month old (the baby should be between 2 and 6 months old during the warmer months here).

I am SO happy with how the bloomers turned out!  They are too cute!!  I love the ruffled edges at the bottom!  And I am so impressed with how finished they look (i.e. they don’t look like something that was just thrown together).  In a way, I am glad that the dress directions were a little too difficult and made me stop.  Being able to make the bloomers (and in a day, no less!) and see one finished product from this big project has given me a LOT of encouragement to tackle the dress where I left off….but after I take the pattern to my friend and ask for her help in understanding it first!