New Friend and Old Friend Collaborative Project

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

Her stuff is just precious!  RaeAnna has an embroidery machine, and lately, she's been very busy with custom orders, including a couple for me!  We'll get to the details of this in just minute...

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.

For the dress, I used my Cottage Mama Janey Jumper pattern and modified it slightly so that the closure is at the shoulder seams instead of at the back.

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

After I picked the dress panels up from her, it took me roughly a day to sew both dresses.  I would have been done in about a half day if it hadn't been for those buttonholes!  I'm not sure if it is me or my machine, but I have trouble getting the buttonhole stitches to look consistently nice and neat.  If you've got suggestions on what I should do to improve my buttonhole making skills, please let me know!

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!