Tutorial: baby dress

It's one of those days when Caitlin naps thrice in a day that I get to have some mommy time. So for today, I sewed another dress for her. Mommy time is still a bit about her at times.

The idea for this dress came from Mommy Raquel who showed me a link on Facebook selling clothes for baby girls.

Baby dress by CutieTots Shop

Inspired again, I immediately went shopping for textile at Fabric Warehouse in Libis, Quezon City.

These are my cool finds. I love the nautical-inspired fabric. I am eager to create a matching mommy and baby outfit with it. Watch out for this page soon.

It took me six hours to piece this dress together, from drawing the pattern to taking the final picture and changing soiled nappy in between. The sewing time usually shortens once you get the hang of it.

Anyway, eager beaver as I could be sometimes, I opted to work with what I have just so I can get started. As you'll see, I wasn't able to use matching threads. But it still worked for me.

For the free baby dress pattern, Small Dream Factory offers a simple design for four to six-month olds. Check the quick tutorial here.

Again, I worked with what I have so I modified the front part that calls for a zipper and instead added about two more inches at the shoulder area of the back piece to make room for snap-on buttons.

Plus, I embellished with frayed rosettes and modified (for lack of a better sewing term) the ends.

In case you have hours to spare, try this out, too.

What you will need:

- less than 1/2 yard of fabric for the dress. I used non-stretch Cotton Voile.
- about 1/4 fabric for the lining. I used Swiss Voil in cream.
- sewing accessories such as scissors, pins, threads, and markers.
- glue gun and stick for the frayed rosettes.

Print the free baby dress pattern. I put one centimeter seam allowance all over the pattern because it is not included here. For Caitlin's current size, however, it was not necessary after all.

Since I wanted a two-toned baby dress, I marked the lower portion where I will put the other fabric.

My pattern pieces with cream lining. The strips on the left side will serve as armhole binding.

Pin the blue fabric on the yellow one and sew. Do the same for your back piece.

So it'll look like this.

You may choose to add binding as seen on the armholes or neatly fold the fabric and sew as seen on the neck.

 It'll look like this. Finish sewing the top of shoulder.

Make a bias tape and cut into strips of 2" long. Click here for the tutorial on how to make a bias tape.

Fold the bias tape pieces in half, pin them in between your lining and front fabric, and sew.

Look from the inside (wrong side) before sewing.

Pin both sides and sew.

Make two frayed rosettes. Check out the free frayed rosettes tutorial here.

Place them here and hand sew in place.

And there you have it. You may either sew in buttons or put snap-on buttons on the shoulder. This pattern may be adjusted to fit your growing baby.

See if it fits her and make the necessary adjustments. In my case, I had to shorten the dress a bit.

Oopppsss. Too short this time. I need to adjust it again then have snap-on buttons added at the Kamuning Market.

Up next, I'll be making a matching diaper cover. Watch out for it. =)

- Mommy Smiley