Infant/Toddler Easter Dress

Creative:

I have always known that if I were to ever have a baby girl, I would make her dresses. I love seeing all the adorable Easter dresses in the stores toward the end of February and beginning of March. This year, I wanted to go for the gold and make C's Easter dress.

I tried to find some free online patterns but none of them were up to my standard for my oldest girls' first Easter dress. And I'm going to tell you right now, this is not a tutorial. It's more of a "look-what-you-can-do-on-your-own-without-much-sewing-experience-at-all" type post. Anyway, I went to JoAnn and found the perfect pattern. All McCall's patterns were on sale for $1.99 each, so I picked one with multiple different dresses for different sizes. This year, I made dress C, but I will probably use the same pattern for a different dress next year!

Not only was the pattern extremely inexpensive, but I already had ribbon, flowers, AND lilac purple fabric laying around at home. Of course, the lining can be any fabric that doesn't clash with the dress color, so that was already in my fabric bins as well.

This dress pattern was very basic. I only got stumped on the sleeves and had to enlist my mom's help on understanding the pattern... With a large amount of free time, this could be done in a day. But, when counting by number of nap times, like I do with my projects, this took me about 4-5 total nap times to complete. Not bad.

If you don't have much experience sewing clothing, start with baby/toddler clothes...because babies look good in ANYTHING, even if it doesn't work out as planned! Find a simple pattern and take it slow: cut out the pieces, read through the instructions and get a mental picture of what to expect, and start with step 1! The internet has plenty of tutorials and definitions for different pattern-specific terms. Don't be afraid of Google when trying out a new skill. 

Compassionate:

My little Angel wore this to church on Sunday and was the belle of the ball. I could not take my eyes off of her! And what baby girl doesn't look good in light purple! The end goal here is to gain enough experience that I can later sew dresses WITH my little girl. But for now, nap times it is.

Happy:

I know Easter is over, but what a splendid time of year it is. I love the new life seen outside after the long, cold winter. I love all the cute dresses for little girls preparing for warm sunny weather. And I especially love celebrating the life, atonement, and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. What a wonderful time to be reminded of His infinite sacrifice for us so that we can continue to keep Him in our hearts and minds daily and strive to be more like Him. That is where all my happiness stems from.