Baby dresses

My husband finally moved to an acute rehabilitation facility on Tuesday night.  The center itself is dismal and dingy.  When I saw it, I cried.  But I guess it doesn't matter what it looks (and smells) like - as long as he gets better there.  The actual therapists seem dedicated, competent and compassionate, and that is the most important thing.  At least, all this is what I keep telling myself.

We don't know how long he will be there, but he will be doing a minimum of three hours of physical and occupational therapy a day.  It's been two weeks since he's been home and we are all missing him greatly.  My mama shoulders feel tired and overloaded.

I wrote this post quite a while ago, saved for a rainy day.  There hasn't been a significant amount of sewing going on here this week, so here you go:

It has been a big year for my in-laws. Last November they had three grandchild.  By this August they will have six. There was a brief period (about two weeks) where I and both my sisters-in-law were all pregnant at the same time.  I did not know what I was having but my sisters-in-law found out and both were expecting girls.

So when it was baby gift time, I reverted to my favorite baby girl gift - a tiny little dress plus an accessory or two.

My new niece born in December received this:

I sewed another 6-12 month sized Oliver+S Music Box Jumper with a gathered skirt.  For the bodice, I used most of the very last scrap of my long-hoarded Kokka matryoshka doll cotton.   The rest of the scrap was used on the covered buttons in the back (I also saved a couple small heart-shaped pieces for future appliqués).  I paired it with navy blue voile salvaged from the lining of my first Washi dress, and some red gingham piping acquired on sale from Martha Pullen a few years ago.  I made a Purl Soho baby bonnet to go with it, using scraps of white sateen, gray quilting cotton and more of the red gingham piping. Red topstitching around the hem.  My niece doesn't fit into it yet but I'm hoping to see it modeled soon.  My sister-in-law loved it :)

My other sister-in-law got this for baby due in July:



I used some stash fabric - one of the last pieces of quilting cotton yardage from my early sewing days.  I decided to try out the free 0-3 month Geranium pattern for this one.  I did not realize until I was finished sewing the dress that the pattern as written has kind of an awkward back-skirt overlap.



Everyone raves about the pattern but few blog posts mention this issue.  To be honest, it feels a little sloppy to me.  I don't think my sister-in-law noticed, though.  Nor, I hope, did she notice that I sewed the skirt on upside down. (This dress was sewn at 1 a.m. during a particularly awful bout of pregnancy insomnia.)

I added a matching diaper cover made using the tutorial from Dana-Made-It and threw in a half dozen double-sided flannel washcloths/cloth wipes.

 Baby gift = done!