The emergency button dress

I promised Helen a new dress for preschool photo day (she needs summer dresses anyway) and took her fabric shopping. Despite her usual assertion that red is her favourite colour, and my attempts to sway her to something less, um, loud, she picked a hot pink fabric with white pin stripes.
I picked an Ottobre blouse pattern and lengthened it to make a dress. It was all humming along nicely, and last night it was almost finished, bar the buttons and button holes. I thought that photo day was Wednesday, but this morning at preschool drop-off, I realised that photo day was today! I panicked a bit about the potential meltdown that might happen when Helen realised she wasn't wearing her new dress for the photos, but the teacher assured me that the photographer wasn't arriving until 10.30. It was worth a shot.
I went straight to the shops to buy buttons (had to wait for the shop to open!), then straight home to the sewing machine. I hastily marked out the spacing and sewed the button holes, then started sewing on the buttons. Having run out of time, I used safety pins to attach the last three buttons and raced back to preschool. Thankfully they had decided to photograph the other class first, and Helen got to wear her new dress. Later, she modelled for me at home (sorry about the wrinkles, it was stuffed into her bag a few times today):

Modelling shots, take two

Here is Helen, the intended recipient, wearing the outfit by Dani.


As you can see, she's really happy with it!

Oops

The lovely outfit Dani sewed is actually for Helen, who is taller than Heather but otherwise not much bigger, and I guessed wrongly that it was for Heather. My apologies, Dani. I will get some modelling shots as soon as I can.

Lovely! Heather's outfit by Dani

Today is opening day for the EB kids' clothing swap!
Dani made this cute little outfit for Heather (who is almost 2). She did a great job - so many perfect details like gathered patch pockets on the shorts, topstitching and hand stitched facings and hems.Dani also included two pieces of fabric and some choclates in the parcel - you can guess what had happened to the chocolates before I even got the camera out!


Susan has opened her parcel for Kaiden, so I can show pictures of what I made for him:

Western shirt from a Surefit pattern and shorts from Ottobre 5/2006 (#19 Corduroy pants).


The vest is also from Ottobre 5/2006, but I simplified it and changed the shape of the front edge to make it more like the vest that Woody wears in Toy Story.



Rear views:

Finished!

I sent my parcels today. Here are sneak peeks of each:

The tester is looking good, though I'm very glad it's just a tester! I'm having to work out the construction on my own, and attempt #2 is ok, but I've realised there is another method that would probably work better. I've also done some steps out of order - will definitely be writing down the proper order before I sew the real thing! I'll probably go fabric shopping tomorrow for it.

Well, I went back to fix the part I mentioned before, and once I did that it became obvious that another part was not right and not fixable, so I've started again. Actually, I started the second one last week and most of the sewing is done. I'm debating with myself whether to redo a part that's bugging me - probably I will.

I've decided what to make for my second swap partner. The pattern is from an old Japanese pattern book (1975 vintage). I think the patterns probably run small, so I'm testing it out on some cheapy fabric first. The tester will be for DD, although I didn't realise until I got the fabric home how awful it is, so I hope she doesn't want to wear it much! I don't have fabric for the real swap item yet, but here's a sneak peek from the pattern book illustration: