She May Be Big, But She’s Still My Little Girl

A few months ago my Mom and I were shopping at a quilt store together.  We didn’t *need* anything, but you know, sometimes it is just necessary to see what the quilt stores have.  Well, we didn’t need anything until we saw this great sheep border fabric, and suddenly we *needed* to make Julia a new dress.

I got the fabric home and washed it, as usual.  While folding it, Elena came over and insisted that she needed a dress made out of that sheep fabric!  Hmmm.  I called my Mom and we hemmed and hawed over that, thinking about how Elena is growing up and perhaps this fabric would just be too babyish for her.  No final decision was made as it was still winter and I wasn’t making the dress anytime soon.

But you know what, when I brought out the fabric a couple weeks ago to make a dress for one of my girls, I finally came to the realization that my 6-year-old might seem really big, but she is still a little girl, and if she wants a dress made out of little sheep, then by gosh she’s going to get a dress with little sheep!  My Mom whole-heartedly agreed.  And the dress was made.

Elena just seems so big and grown up already, especially compared to her little sister.  But seeing the dress on her, it is perfect and it is perfectly her.  No matter how tall she is, she still needs lots of hugs, kisses, encouragement, and maybe even some cartoon sheep.

This pattern is one I’ve used many, many times before: New Look 6613 (some of my previous version can be seen here and here.)  I altered the pattern slightly — mainly because I couldn’t cut the bottom of the skirt in a curve as drawn as it would cut the sheep border off, and also because I wanted the skirt to twirl some more.

There’s 2-yards’ length in that skirt!

So I used the entire length that we bought, gathered it and attached it to the bodice.  I made the dress a size or two too big because I’ve gotten caught on Elena growing out of things way too fast.  I now sort of wish I made it a bit truer to size, but it is still cute and will last for a while hopefully!

I put the straps close to the middle in the back of the dress hoping it would prevent them from falling down so much, but they still fall down some.  I think maybe if I’d stuck with her size this would have worked better.

And on a side note, isn’t Grammy and Papa’s backyard great?!?  The girls spend forever out there exploring.  In this next picture, it is hard to tell but Elena is playing with a spider web, trying to see which strings are sticky and seeing if the spider will move:

Go Team!

Some good friends of ours recently found out that they are expecting a little boy in a few months.  Of course this means I’m going to make a quilt, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to mail them a couple onesies to help celebrate.

I admittedly got the idea to make these sports-themed onesies from someone else.  You can buy some great sports-ball onesies for yourself, instead of crafting them, at Bambino Balls.   I’ve heard from a friend that they are great quality.  However, if you have some onesies and some felt, they are also pretty easy to make.  I picked up my plain onesies from Hobby Lobby (yes, they carry plain brown!) and used some felt and Steam-a-Seam I had around.  I then just ironed on the felt and stitched around it.  Et Voila!  2 new onesies!

I am a huge fan of the football onesie and would have loved to dress my girls in one and carry them around all over in the football carry.  Tons of fun for sleep-deprived parents!  ha!  My baseball onesie is just okay in my mind.  My husband actually couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be even though he got the football one immediately.  Looking at the ones from Bambino Balls perhaps I should have chevronned the short lines…

And I include this seemingly nearly-identical picture to remind everyone to PREWASH!  The onesies I picked up are incredibly soft and thick.  And apparently shrink the heck all up in the wash.  I had pre-washed the brown onesie before I started to make sure the brown wouldn’t bleed.  I totally forgot about the white onesie because, hello, there wouldn’t be any bleeding issues, totally forgetting about shrinkage.

The picture at the top of this post shows both onesies, both sized 6 months.  The brown one has been washed but the white one has not.  The white onesie looks HUGE!  Yet they both started at the same size!

The picture at the bottom of this post shows both onesies again, now both washed.  (I washed because I now was worried that the red would bleed and wanted to be sure the gift wasn’t going to be ruined with it’s first use.)  But look, now the white one seems smaller than the brown!  Again, they started at the same size!  And of course, by not pre-washing my felt got a bit funky.  Ahh well.  Still good enough to send for sure, but a good reminder to pre-wash, and perhaps also a pointer to not buy the smallest onesies at Hobby Lobby because they might shrink to nothing!

These will hopefully go in the mail tomorrow, and then I’ll continue quilt discussions with my husband for this new baby.  He has definite opinions.