I promise Paul’s quilt it coming… I will finish it soon… I just have to keep telling myself that I *will* work on it. The trouble is I have so many OTHER projects that just keep popping into my head that I simply *must do* right away. So I start, finish and move on from those projects and Paul’s poor quilt sits there unfinished. At least I finished the top… I just have to finish the back, bind and quilt it. Hmn, sounds like a lot doesn’t it?

In any case I thought I’d show off the latest sewing creation for Amelia. I made a version of the Vivienne jumper from burdastyle. If you haven’t heard of it before you should definitely check it out. Burdastyle is all about “open source sewing” – the giving and receiving of all things sewing knowledge, tips, advice and patterns. I happen to be a HUGE fan of the concept of open source anything. To me if you know it you might as well share it, even in photography and business. If I can help someone else improve their life and skills I’d love to do so. In any case I have fallen in love with burdastyle and all of the tutorials and patterns. The Vivienne jumper is one of the free ones. Did you catch that?! FREE!! I happen to be a big fan of free patterns.

I read in the reviews that it was possibly a little short on some kids and while Amelia’s not a giant by any means I was worried that if I made it too short it wouldn’t be useful for long since she’s growing so quickly. I also thought in looking at the pattern that it looked a little off in proportion compared to most of her dresses, a little squatter, so I figured it must just be too short. So I opted to just go ahead and plan to add a good 3 inches of length at the bottom as a contrast stripe (I turned the fabric 90 degrees before cutting – is there a more technical term for this?! I really don’t know much sewing lingo). I was also inspired by one of the finished project photos to add an applique giraffe to the dress for added cuteness because come on, who doesn’t love a giraffe?

I decided to add the applique before I finished the dress because since the dress is lined I wanted the stitches to go through only the top layer instead of both the outside and lining layers. As I sat there for somewhere close to two hours hand stitching that little giraffe on with green embroidery floss I began to wonder if maybe this wasn’t the smartest idea… what if the dress was ugly or didn’t fit? I would have wasted ALL that time stitching a giraffe onto a ruined dress. But it was too late and I’d already started.

I planned to finish the dress in one evening but after all the time involved in the applique I put it aside for the next day. The rest of the dress construction was actually fairly quick and straightforward. I finished it up (except for the buttons which I wanted to place after trying it on) and hung it up. It was darn cute. I was so proud of myself.

And then I tried it on her… only to find out that it was big. Really really big. We’re talking gigantic. Gaping all around the sides and at the armhole. My added length made the dress a nice proportion but apparently it was the proportion of a 3 or 4 year old. Oops. So I threw in the towel on the idea of a reversible dress (as this was supposed to be) and took it in the cheap and dirty easiest way I knew how – I just took a good inch to inch and a half off each side seam, pinned, tried it back on (much better) sewed, chopped and serged the new edges. Finished. Phew. Crisis averted. The dress falls pretty low at her knees but I actually think that’s a good thing. She’ll get more wear out of it that way. Even with all the resizing and smallifying the dress is still very generously sized through the torso and should fit for quite a while. The last step was attaching the buttons (I gave Amelia the choice between star or round buttons, she picked the stars) which I sort of botched (turns out I’m not super skilled at button holes, who knew?) despite the fact that I did several nearly perfect button holes on my scrap fabric. You can’t really tell from standing back but the holes are too big and kind of messy. Oh well. The imperfections make it genuine, unique and handmade right? But enough with the blabbering, here’s the dress. Modeled by my little lady with her pink pajamas and frog boots when I tried on the finished product.

The dress was sewn expressly with the intention of being worn in the family portraits that we had taken last week and just because I’m crazy and couldn’t find a satisfactory white shirt for her to wear under it I decided to make one of those as well. I used this super easy and quick tutorial from crafterhours for a ringer t-shirt with two modifications – first I used a thinner band for the ribbing and made it the same color and second I made the shirt long sleeved. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and easily it came together and I’m pretty sure that I’m now going to be making all (or at least a lot of) the kids’ t-shirts.

I am so excited at how the outfit turned out and even MORE excited about how the pictures turned out!! I haven’t seen all of them yet but we just got a sneak peek this morning from the photographer. The super talented Kristina Young followed us around for an entire afternoon “doing what we do” – playing, reading, laughing and having fun. And the photos are fabulous! Doesn’t the outfit look perfect?! I love it!! More photos on her blog

I also recently finished a dress for myself from a burdastyle pattern… more on that soon 🙂