Gingham Dress and Swaddling Blankets for Baby

First off, Mother, don’t get too excited this was for a friend, sorry to disappoint  🙂  Yes, as I teased at in earlier posts my friend grew and spawned a tiny human and I made lots ‘o stuff for baby!

Adorable ain’t it!  This is McCall’s 5353 and actually the first time in a LONG time I sewed from one of the Big 4 pattern companies…. what can I say I’m an Indie girl at heart 😉

There’s not much to say about this construction wise…. I sewed the smallest size possible and everything was very straight forward.  The one thing I did differently was instead of adding embellishment I just topstitched everything using my standard double thread trick.

The one thing that was a “challenge” on this little item was the fact that I used my button hole “function” for the first time!  Now, I put “challenge” and “function” in quotes because: a) I realize making button holes on a machine isn’t really much of a challenge for most and b) my machine is a sweet, all metal beast from the 1960’s so it’s button function isn’t really so much a function as a series of steps.  But I have finally mastered that bitch!  Like many things in life it really wasn’t so bad once you finally just DID IT.

Another shot of the button ’cause it’s so freaking adorable!  I went to Jo-ann’s in search of plain red buttons to match one I already had and came back with ladybugs 🙂

Baby bloomers!  The gingham fabric is, I’m guessing, a cotton-poly blend and something I’ve had for years…. It’s actually from a failed Walkaway dress I attempted when first learning to sew.  I cut the pieces out wrong and was so pissed about it I just shoved it in a closet!  And that was the last dress I attempted to sew without making a muslin first 😀

During the baby shower Mama-to-be mentioned off hand needing to get more swaddling blankets- I took one look at the ones she had and said “I can make that!”  Seriously, this is probably one of the easiest projects I’ve done in a while.  You’re making a 44×44 inch square…. that’s it.  I had her pick a couple of colors of cotton gauze she liked from here, ordered a yard and a half, and that was that!

[Side note: The original fabric she requested was cotton muslin….which was confusing to me ’cause I wouldn’t want to wrap myself in that rough stuff let alone a baby!  Well, evidently her swaddling blankets came from an Australian company and in Australia cotton gauze=cotton muslin…..Sewaholic did a post a few years ago about British vs North American sewing terms, which was great!]

Once you have your fabric squares cut all that’s left are the mitered corners.  I used this tutorial for the corners and above you can see my varying degrees of success

Well, that’s it for baby stuff!  I’m working on a lot of projects for other people right now, but hopefully I’ll get some time to start in on some stuff for ME 🙂