Tuesday, September 10, 2013

WIP: Granddaughter Dresses

I did not want to miss my third WIP in a row. I have been busy traveling and working on redecorating the living room and I have not done much quilting. I did want to share what I just finished though... two cute little dresses for my 11 month old granddaughter. I can't wait to see her in them!

This one has owls and squirrels and little birdies. I thought the owl buttons were a perfect match.


My daughter wants to be sure her daughter is exposed to toys and prints that are stereo-typed as being for boys. I honored that with this airplane print but I did put lace on the sleeves. The aqua and other blues in this print will go great with my granddaughter's big blue eyes.


My, but my clothing sewing skills were rusty! It was awfully hard to switch back to the HUGE 5/8" seam allowance after all my quilting with a 1/4" seam allowance. Puffed sleeves? I was out of practice on gathering those after all my flat quilts. Notions? I have many boxes of bias tape, hem lace, buttons, rick rack, and elastic but finding them was a challenge and I think took just as much time as the sewing. I did find my tracing kit with wheel and coated colored wax paper for transferring pleat markings and casing line markings. The 59 cent price really dates it. I could not even find the cent sign on my computer keyboard.


I will be checking out other folk's projects tomorrow since it is so late here but at least tonight I wanted to link up to WIP Wednesday at http://www.freshlypieced.com/ 


Stats since last WIP 8/21/13:
     Completed  projects - 2 dresses
     Currently in progress - too many, no change in list since last time
     New projects - 2 dresses   

17 comments:

  1. The really like the plane print in the second dress - my girls prefer to play with cars and trains rather than dolls - although they do whip up a fantastic pretend cup of tea in their play kitchen lol!

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    1. Cars and trains roll and make cool noises and are very interesting to play with. How else can you get to all those tea parties? :•)

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  2. These were sweet of you to sew. I think I've only seen her in a dress once, as onesies seem to be her main outfit, so it will be nice to see her in your dress creations!

    Question: How do you ensure that the buttons absolutely won't come off and become a choking hazard? I think I'd worry about that. Is there a special sewing trick or product that you use?

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    1. I did consider the buttons as a choking hazard and sewed them on really well with double strand of thread knotting it off. Then I did it again for each button with another independent strand of double thread, again knotted off separately. They are pretty secure and if they should both the attachment and its backup begin to become loose they certainly will be detected and can be firmed up or the buttons removed depending on the comfort level of Autumn's mom and dad. As for dresses versus onesies, I think once walking becomes Autumn's preferred method of mobility over crawling, dresses may become more popular.

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  3. I sure can relate to the change from garment clothing after quilt making. The garments I have been making the lat couple of weeks are for Raggedy dolls! The little dresses are darling!

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    1. Thanks for the compliment. I did see some some patterns for doll dresses and the thought that ran through my mind was "how tiny to sew on and truly a work of patience for a doll ... a real work of love for the doll's mommy though"

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  4. Love the dress, but the airplanes are my favourite. Love to see girls clothes that are not all about butterflies and cherries and cats and flowers and ice cream. Though all these things are nice too!

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    1. Thanks. The airplane dress is more of a short romper top so I still have the matching bloomers to make for it.

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  5. I have a 9 month old GD and want to sew a dress for her. I made clothing 20+ years ago so I imagine I am as rusty as they come. Where did you find the cute patterns? I am not finding much in the stores. There are gorgeous fabrics now a days but I am not seeing the choice of patterns that I think I had when my daughter was little. Yours look sweet. My DD's favorite color is blue so I am making things with blue. And my GD Daddy is handy so I want to make things with some fabric that is more boy related. Such fun!

    Michelle
    in seattle

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    1. From Diane's husband - I brought down about 10 boxes each containing about 30-50 patterns from the attic - these would have been about 30 years old.

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    2. These patterns date back to my 33 year old daughter as a baby. I also have boy patterns my sister saved from my 44 yr old nephew. My husband exaggerates just a bit. There were probably only about 15-20 patterns in each box but they spanned sizes from infant through child size about 8. He humored me by hanging on to them all these years but now when we see as high as $16 for a pattern for Butterick or Simplicity we are glad we did.

      Of course I still have up in the attic other men's and ladies dress patterns- perhaps another 10 -15 boxes or so. Maybe I should check if those styles have come back? Maybe the styles have but my body shape sure hasn't...LOL

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    3. Also, try etsy.com ; You can get plenty of vintage patterns there. I actually found some of the "vintage" patterns are still available in the store, they're just not shown in the catalog. But, you can go online and pull the pattern number, then go to the store and see if they have it in stock. I had great success with Simplicity and McCalls patterns I liked that way.

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  6. Fascinating observation about the cent sign

    ASCII HTML HTML
    Dec Hex Symbol Number Name Description

    162 A2 ¢ ¢ ¢ cent sign

    Try putting ¢ in the html code for the page

    WHOA - just saw the preview and it mangled the post by making html substitutions!
    Maybe if you see the post in the edit mode you can see what I originally said!

    Frank (husband)

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    1. I knew that comment about not finding a cent sign on the keyboard would spark some computer savvy readers interest. Guess it proves my husband reads my blog!

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  7. Lillian is wearing your airplane dress today! I'll try to text you a picture of her in it tonight. I had thought that Robin had made it, but couldn't find a post about it on her blog. Then I looked here and found it. You made this dress for Autumn when shew was 11 months old. Lillian is now wearing it at nearly 21 months old - and the bottoms are still too big for her! She looks super cute in it, though, and I'm glad the garment continues to live on, as I'm sure you are!

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