S's dress, er, shirt

   At church on Sunday, we talked about developing our talents and aspirations. The lady who taught told us how she really wanted to be a painter, but lacked the time, money, and confidence to start. The desire never left her, and as a young mother she finally just gathered some computer paper, craft paint, and children's brushes from around the house and got to work. Long story short- she's now illustrates children's books. She showed us her work and it is amazing.
   Well, I really want to learn to sew. I'm not good, but I'm trying. I had to start somewhere, so I started with quilts. As long as you can cut lots of pieces and sew a straight line, you can make a quilt (especially if you pay someone else to do the actual quilting after it's pieced like I do). So I've made 5 quilts, and I'm over them for a while.

"The Baby Maker" (The Proposal.. anyone?)
I made this for Jonny as a birthday surprise.
It's a rough and tumble type of quilt.

Quilt for my nephew Jude (Lindsey, not Lloyd)

The other three (the one on the left was my first ever, the other two are for Scarlett)

I also appliqued some shirts for my nieces a long time ago (no pics), and a shirt for myself to support Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Also, super easy.

So now I'm moving on to baby clothes and other simple projects (ideas welcome). Baby and kids clothes don't scare me quite as much because babies don't have hips, or waists, or a bustline. Just big round tummies. Yesterday, I set out to make a dress for Scarlett out of scraps I've had for a while. I found a tutorial at www.gingerhendrix.com that dumbed the process down to someone on my level or lower (like what folding lengthwise means!).
   Everything went pretty smoothly (except when I had to text my ultra talented sewing friend Stephanie to ask her how to make my machine baste) until the end. I sewed up the "gutted fish" and tried it on her. It slid right on, then slid right off. The straps were way too big. So I took it off her, unpicked the straps, and sewed them on nice a tight. Well now the straps fit, but the dress would not go over my daughter's adorable globe of a head or her wonderfully round tummy.
   I unpicked the back of the dress and brainstormed how I could get this thing on Scarlett. First thought, buttons! Buttons would make it easier to get on! Only problem... I don't know how to make a buttonhole... yet, and the only buttons at my house are a random assortment of extras from my own clothes. Fail.
    So I decided to think back to my earliest experience with fashion design- Barbie. Barbie's arms are akin to baby arms in that they are impossible to get into tight clothes. How did Mattel solve this problem? Velcro. Genius. I found some velcro strips in a drawer from a previous project (Oh yeah! Another project. I sewed fabric paper dolls for my niece Evelyn. They looked like this: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2010/02/flat-emelie-and-matt.html). Voila! The dress goes on.
   Now I have a different problem. The tight dress ends at the fattest part of my baby... her thighs. It keeps riding up a bunching. Dang! I knew I should have put more pleats than that front one it to make the skirt fuller. I then hacked off about 3-4 inches, re-hemmed the bottom, and the dress became a shirt. The straps were still a little big so I said, "Ah, to Heck with it!". I unpicked them one last time, tied them in a knot behind her head, and it became a halter-top.

Too tight dress

The final product! Ta da!

Is the dress shirt amazing? No, but it's okay. Am I proud? You betcha (please- I made an entire blog post about it). I'm proud that I didn't give up. I'm proud that I'm now a pro at hemming. I'm proud that I learned how to make a pleat! Who knew? I'm proud that I was able to improvise. I'm proud that I now feel comfortable doing this project again, that it won't take as long, and I hopefully won't have to unpick as many seams.