Coming Together

I've been working on the final set of costumes for my Fashions book. It needed a cut-off point or it would never get printed, so the final photos to be included will be those of Matias and Agnes' family. I'd already completed Agnes' gown last summer, and Matias' formal outfit last month...

Then at Christmas when I decided they'd have a daughter, Olivia, she needed something to wear as well, and I thought it would be nice if her dress would be in similar colours to her mother, I chose a gray/green brocade, and a wide pink lace, and started work on it...

I had originally made her a flower wreath for her hair, but decided to make her a hat as well. Velour is a much softer fabric than the fabric of her dress, and therefore makes a better crown, so I used some leftovers from Agnes' gown for the crown of Olivia's hat....

With Olivia having a hat now, I thought Agnes needed something to replace her flower wreath as well, so I made her a little Medieval cap.

It was the same design I'd used before, but this time I added parts of a necklace I'd found at Value Village. I stitched the chain of pale blue rhinestones across the front, and secured the front of the necklace with the dangling pink and pale blue pendents across the back....

Then it was the baby's turn. I used the same brocade as Olivia's dress, but felt that the shiny flower designs were too big for such a small dress, so I used the wrong side of the fabric. All my pink laces were not really suitable, so I just used some pink cotton and stitched on some fine, narrow, white and cream lace. Then, to eliminate messy hemmed edges on the very fine brocade, I made the gray/green overskirt panels double thickness, stitched the edges, and turned them right side out.

When working on such a tiny garment I find it's necessary to hand baste every seam before running it under the sewing machine. And even then, especially with curved seams like armholes, I often have to pick out the machine stitching and do it again. Sometimes more than once.

But eventually after redoing a few seams on the machine, then finishing by hand, and doing all the embroidery and embellishing, the tiny dress was done, and the baby had a cute matching outfit.