little dresses for little ones

I'm still kicking on making dresses, only this time in miniature. Funny how there's less fabric, less sewing but making little girls clothes takes just as long as big girls clothes - it is quite fiddly making them but they turn out oh so cute so it was worth it.

My friend Lisa, a fellow town planner extraordinaire, is expecting her second child (a girl) in December, shortly before me. Lisa has been an amazing source of support for me in my first stab at this pregnancy game - no question of mine has been too silly for her and she keeps sending me all these great resources, so to thank her I decided to make her a little baby outfit for her little watermelon. I made the comfy jumper dress with bloomers from Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones, because I am still determined to get my moneys worth out of that book! This is the pattern as it appears in the book:

I made the size for 3 - 6 month olds because Lisa's first born was rather large to begin with, and he has just grown and grown since. And this way her little girl will be able to wear it in Febuary when it's still quite hot here in Sydney. It looks rather small to me, but then again I haven't dressed a baby before and I assume that Amy Butler has tested the patterns sizes on real life kids so I'll trust her judgement. I'm not a huge fan of her instructions though - I found them quite complicated, the drawings of little help and the method quite different to what I'm used to from using the Big 4 patterns. I don't want to sound obnoxious, but I think because I'm a competent sewer I found her instructions too simple to follow, so in the end I ignored them and just did what I thought would work. And it did work, so no harm done.

I made it from a soft cotton voile in a pink and light brown cherry blossom print, fully lined in pink cotton poplin because the voile was rather sheer and too light on its own. I embellished it with a gunmetal grey ribbon round the waist and some bows on the top to reduce it's overall pinkness, and it just looks adorable:

The fabric is actually left over from the dress I made there on the left that I wore to my brother in laws wedding last December. No reason to post it here, except that I like to remember what my waistline used to look like!

Thanks for all your comments on the last post, especially Linda - please come back and post such nice comments all the time! And yes I know you're right Vicki, every time I feel huge I do see some other poor woman who is much bigger all over, including the swollen feet and fingers which I haven't really had yet so I shouldn't complain (too much anyway!).

And yes my husband is very tall - he is over 6 feet, I think 6'4 or around there? I'm average height, I think around 5'4 but I do only come up to his shoulder even in my tallest shoes, as you can see in my wedding photos I posted here. It was pretty funny when we went to China a few years ago, because he towered over all the native Chinese people and they were alternating between staring at the giant and the redhead, especially in the rural areas. I think it comes from being born in Australia, because his brother and cousins that are also Australian born are very tall, must be something to do with the food, water and quality of life.

The building works are kicking on too - the framework to the house is completed, the framework to the garage nearly done and apparently by the end of next week we should have a roof and possibly windows! If only those pesky builders didn't take so long to lay the slab they could have saved me (and hubby) a huge amount of angst..... But I always say that things usually work out alright in the end, and this looks to be the case here (fingers crossed).

The baby is also having a jolly good time kicking away in there, particularly at night time after I've managed to get comfortable and ready for sleep. So I'm guessing if there's still enough room in there for all that movement there's still a fair amount of growing left for the little monkey - eek!