A Little Vintage

I found this dress on etsy and instantly fell in love.  It was listed as vintage and I'm pretty sure it's home made.  There are no tags and the seams definitely looks like they weren't professionally finished. I love the tiny bits of embroidery, the tiny pearl buttons, and the delicate lace detailing.  I also love that if I let down the hem she can keep wearing this beauty for two years.  More modern dresses need to have thick hems.  My daughter (and my boys) always outgrew things length wise long before they outgrew them in width.

She is also wearing a vintage crinoline which she has, sadly, outgrown.  I'm on the lookout for another one because I love the way dresses hang over crinolines.  The little toddler legs sticking out of a poofy dress is one of the cutest things.




I really wish I hadn't chopped the balloons in this one.  It's one of those things I need to pay more attention to.







I have a couple other vintage dresses as well, but one of them somehow escaped a photo shoot!  I don't know how that happened but I'm sure it's too short now and the hem had already been let down.

More dress attempts

I found the most beautiful snow white fabric on Etsy and new it was destined to be a dress for Little Miss. I bought 1/2 yard of it and it sat on a shelf for months waiting for inspiration. While I was looking at one of my favorite blogs, MADE, I remembered a tutorial for puffed sleeves and inspiration hit. I collected my materials and got started.

I grabbed a dress that fit Miss and sketched out the yoke. My plan was to just gather a dress piece and sew it onto the bottom, but that didn't' work out as well as I'd hoped. My fabric was silkscreened and I kept breaking my thread while trying to gather. My guess is that the silk screening makes the fabric too thick for ruffles. Very irritating. I finally gave up and used box pleats. Not what I originally had in mind, but it's cute anyway.  For the life of me, I couldn't get the sleeves to work.  Apparently, my bodice piece was too short.  Anyway, before I was able to work it out, she actually outgrew the whole thing, so it's in the scrap pile waiting for a new life.

First Halloween

I wanted something simple for her since she was still a pretty new walker.  I also wanted something warm.  I stumbled on this super cute Pottery Barn Kid's costume and knew she had to have an owl cape.

I wanted something that she could keep wearing and would coordinate with most of her wardrobe so I chose two different brown fleece from Joanne when they were on sale.  I drafted my own pattern and the hood ended up too big so it looked a bit more like a Jedi cape.

I appliqued on the eyes and nose and alternated two different colors for the wings and sewed them in staggered layers to make them look like  feathers.  I'm very pleased with the outcome and she has worn it a lot.  She loves to wear it and it matches just about everything she owns.  It's finally starting to get short on her so I'll have to draft up a larger one.





I love this next series of photos.  She looks like a tiny Jedi.




These are not the cookies you're looking for.

and here she is a full year later wearing the same cape.