Several weeks ago, I made a new friend, RaeAnna, and she likes to sew and blog, too! Yay! Oh, and she has two adorable children, one of which is my daughter's age. We've managed to get together for play dates almost every week now for the past couple of months. I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her and chit chat about our favorite blogs, patterns, and current sewing projects.
Please go check out RaeAnna's blog, Sewing Mama RaeAnna, and see all the fun outfits she's been making lately and exciting projects that she is working on. Here are just a couple of examples...
Photo Credit: Sewing Mama RaeAnna |
Photo Credit: Sewing Mama RaeAnn |
I also recently visited with my life-long friend and college roommate, Lila, who has the cutest little girl, Murfee. You may remember reading my posts a few weeks ago about the Oliver + S Popover Sundress and the Summer Fun Dress Version 2 that I made for Murfee.
Well, Lila showed me this adorable reversible A-line dress that has a Halloween applique on one side and a Thanksgiving applique on the other, but now this dress is too small to fit Murfee.
Dresses by Kelly's Kids |
Lila wanted to know if I could make her a similar dress but in a larger size. I could sew the dress (super easy) but since I didn't have an embroidery machine, I couldn't make the appliques. However, my new friend, RaeAnna, could do the embroidery for me (I hoped)!
When I spoke to RaeAnna, she was just as excited about this project as me! Whew! RaeAnna already had the cutest ever Halloween applique that takes the first letter of your child's name and turns it into a spider. So that one would definitely be the one we would use for the Halloween side of the dress on some black with white check fabric that I already had stashed away.
Next, we needed to pick out a turkey for the Thanksgiving day side of the dress. RaeAnna forwarded to me several turkey applique pictures to choose from, and after changing my mind a half dozen times, I finally went with this one. I had RaeAnna use some of my Joel Dewberry Heirloom fabric for the turkey feathers. The thread she used matches perfectly! I just love it!
I already had some orange with white polka dot fabric and some orange cotton gingham in my fabric stash, and luckily, there was enough to cut out a 24 month dress for Murfee and a 5T for Ella! This project was moving right along.
The reason for this was so we could add cute ribbons at the shoulder (the ribbons have a buttonhole sewn in them so that they fit over the button).
Now, I am not a big fan of making buttonholes, so in the future, I will be making the dress using the original pattern design for sure! I've found that I really like the dress just fine without the ribbons, but that is just my preference.
RaeAnna was so sweet to accommodate my schedule, and she finished all four appliques in less than a week's time! Here are some pictures of her machine in action.
Photo Credit: Sewing Mama RaeAnna |
Here's Murfee's dress:
And here's Ella's dress...
Ella and Murfee love their new dresses, and Lila, RaeAnna, and I do, too! It was so fun collaborating with friends to make these adorable outfits for our daughters.
It was so much fun, in fact, that I just ordered an embroidery machine for myself! A Brother PE770. Where or where am I going to put this thing!?
Now Lila has friends and co-workers requesting a similar dress, so I guess I better figure out how this thing works--fast! I am taking orders for Thanksgiving/Christmas dresses if anyone is interested!
Super cute dresses. I'm sure you're going to be wishing for an embroidery machine very soon now. They really are awesome and BONUS!! I know mine does and I think most of them do, one step button holes in seconds. NO fuss! All you have to do manually is cut the center of the button hole once it's done. If you don't know the trick to making sure you don't cut the satin stitching, take a pin and put that across each end of the button hole before cutting and that pin will stop you from cutting too far.
ReplyDeleteI also have a really great little tool for cutting the centers that comes with its own little tiny cutting mat. They are sold in a lot of stores but here's a link to the one identical to mine on Nancy's Notions site
http://www.nancysnotions.com/product/buttonhole+cutter+3+pc+set.do
Gorgeous, gorgeous dresses, Veronica!!! Love the embroidered applique!!! Hmmm... where could I put another machine????
ReplyDeleteYay!!! What a great blog post! The theme makes me think of the old Girl Scout song - "Make New Friends!"
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see what you start creating - be prepared for a time sucker since you have to babysit your machine as it's working! :) For me, it's my catch up on the computer time!!!
I'll be linking back as I create my Day 1 KCWC post! :)