Blessing Dress

Front of Blessing Dress

Back of Dress

So... now that I am more dedicated to this blog, thought I would share the blessing dress that I made for my daughter, even though we blessed her in March. :) It was an intimidating project. I bought all of the material and stuff to make it about a month in advance. I didn't end up making it until a week and a half before the actual blessing date, because I really didn't know where to start, and was quite intimidated by the whole process actually.
After looking at some tutorials about yoke instructions, and sleeve instructions, I finally jumped over that huge hurdle, of making my first dress. First thing I did? I got rid of the pattern that didn't make ANY sense, and followed these directions, which were super easy and FANTASTIC:) Especially for the Bodice, and yoke.
I bought a pattern that allowed for a very long skirt. WAY LONG actually, it was about 3 times the length of her body. I bought it with the plan in mind that I would alter the skirt somehow. I decided that I liked a lot of the wedding dresses that I had seen that gathered and bunched everywhere. Like this:

SO, I wanted to do that to the skirt. I thought it would be harder than it was, and really loved the process so much that I have decided to make my own skirt the same way soon. I found out that all of those little gathers are called " pick-ups" and found a great tutorial about how to do them here. I ended up using just regular sewing pins to hole the pick ups while I adjusted them to create smaller holes in the fabric, but I think either these or safety pins work great.

The first step in the process was to add a lining to the skirt, which was not part of the pattern I bought... So after making a lining that was just the right length, I turned the hem of the skirt into a bubble hem. Then, I just followed the directions for pick-ups. It was EASY, and after getting it all together, and embellishing it with some rosettes, I was so excited to try another one. Here are some pictures with her in it:

I am planning on posting more regularly :) I chose Tuesdays and Thursdays, SO... have a great weekend. See you Tuesday with a furniture makeover!