The Goat Dresses

 Who wouldn't want a goat dress?

No, No, No. I don't mean a dress for the goat to wear! I mean a human dress, with a goat print on it!

Despite my years and years of raising goats, and my (slightly fewer) years of making myself what ever dress struck my fancy, I actually never considered making myself a goat dress, until The Dreamstress shared this Gilbert Adrian dress on Facebook last year.

It has Sheep on it! (Ok, lambs to be precise.) If a fashion designer in the 1940 could make a sheep dress, why the heck hadn't I made a goat dress yet???

All I had to do was find some goat fabric - and for some reason goats are just about the most under represented farm animals when it comes to animal prints. There are goat prints out there, but they're generally something I have to actually order, verses something I can just go into a local fabric store and buy (after a good half hour of feeling it, considering it, staring longingly at it, and carrying it around the store while admiring other fabrics. I have my method.)

Well, back in January I found a goat print at my favorite place for novelty print cottons - the Mennonite fabric store out in the middle of nowhere. It was blue, with cartoon goats all over it - quite different from the realistic looking lambs frolicking on a green background of my inspiration dress - but it was a goat fabric! So I bought 3 yards of it. 

 

I decided I could use the cartoon goat fabric to make goat dresses for my two favorite preschool-age girls. I'd already made both of these girls chicken dresses, and they both love my goats, so obviously they needed goat dresses!

For two months I intended to just make the little girls dresses out of this goat fabric, and I'd keep my eyes open for just the right goat print for a dress for me. Then it came time to cut the dresses out, and I couldn't do it - I wanted a goat dress right now too! So I shifted plans. All three of us would get matching goat dresses.

To make my three yards of goat fabric stretch I decided to take inspiration from the Gilbert Adrian dress and make the bottom section of the skirt green, just using my blue fabric for the bodice and upper section of the skirt. I found a 2 yard cut of a lovely green swirly fabric at the City Sewing Room for this purpose. And to make sure I'd have plenty of my goat fabric, I also bought 1 yard of a solid pale blue cotton for the collars, cuffs, and waist bands.

Next up, figuring out a pattern! In homage to the inspiration dress, I wanted something vintage(ish atleast), with cut on sleeves and some sort of a collar. To make things slightly complicated, said pattern also needed to come in both adult and children's sizes. Thankfully, I had something that would work in my stash!

 McCall's 7184 - it met all the requirements! This is one of my favorite blouse patterns (you can see my previous versions here and here), and thankfully it comes in both children's and adult sizes - and I own a copy of each! All I had to do was trace off the blouse pattern in the girls' size, shorten the sleeves, shorten the blouse length to the waistline, ignore the darts, add a waist band, sleeve bands, and a skirt, and I'd be set to go! That might sound like a lot, but it was really quite easy. I decided to make the dresses button all the way down the front, as that's been a favorite style of mine lately. 

Not wanting to distract from the design of the dress, and especially the goat print, I decided to use clear buttons on the dresses. I had a nice set of large transparent buttons off of a duvet cover (the duvet cover that became this skirt) for my dress, but finding crystal clear buttons for the girls' dresses proved slightly more challenging. I had one card of clear vintage patterns just the right size - but there were only enough for one dress. Neither Hobby Lobby nor Wal-Mart had any clear buttons, and I didn't have time to go check Joann's that week. So, in the end I I had to settle for a card of clear-ish buttons from my stash for the second little dress. Those worked fine, they just weren't my first choice.

Once the dresses were done, I needed an occasion to give the girls their dresses - and neither one had a birthday any time soon. So I decided to make an occasion, an occasion where we could all three wear our dresses together.

A tea party!! 

I fixed a tea tray with all the most kid-approved foods - chicken nuggets, cookies, and berries. After asking each girl individually ahead of time if they preferred hot of cold tea, the vote was unanimous and I made some iced tea to fill the little tea pot with.

 When the girls arrived for the tea party I gave them each a gift bag. They unwrapped their new dresses, and were both very excited to put on the goat dresses right away!

After they finished their tea, we went outside to find the goats.

Because, if you have a goat dress, obviously, you must wear it to play with goats!!

An Easter Dress of Butterflies and Ruffles

Over the winter, my mom, sister-in-law, niece, and I met up for a morning of fabric shopping at a little Mennonite fabric store we like. We each picked out all sorts of fun fabrics for different projects we had in mind. My niece loved all the fabric (we're training her well) so while we were there I suggested she pick a fabric for her Easter Dress. 

There were several fabrics she considered, but finally a cotton print featuring stripes and butterflies was picked. (Apparently butterflies are the name of the game when it comes to Easter dresses for my niece! Here's her butterfly Easter dress from last year, and the one from the year before.) I bought 2 yards and promised my niece she would have the dress by Easter. I just had to find the right design for the dress. . .

Since the fabric was striped I wanted to make that a design feature - playing with the direction of the stripes for different portions of the gown. I spent a fair amount of time on Pinterest contemplating different design options. Finally, I decided to mostly base the design on the doll dress pictured above - off center buttons down the front, shoulder ruffles, and a square neckline. I'd add little puffed sleeve (since Easter was early this year and might very well to too chilly for sleeveless), a patch pocket on the skirt (because one must have pockets!), and a band around the bottom of the skirt (just an excuse to play a bit with the direction of the stripes.)

I had just the pattern to use as my starting point - McCall's 3023 - the same pattern I used for her Christmas dress, just with different alterations this time.

Really the only alteration I had to make this time was too change the closure from back to front - and that was easy!

 

And since I'd already altered a baby doll pattern to have the same lines as the little girls' pattern back at Christmas, it was easy enough to make a little matching doll dress as well. 

Well, easy as in the pattern was ready to go and it wasn't hard to sew - but I did have to play some pattern tetras to get both dresses cut out of the 2 yards of fabric I had. It would not have been possible if my sister-in-law hadn't suggested making the skirt a touch on the shorter side this year so the dress would be easy to run around in. If that dress shirt had been any longer the doll dress wouldn't have happened. Apparently next time I need to buy 3 yards of fabric to accommodate the matching doll dress better!

My niece and her parents came to visit me a couple weeks before Easter, and I was thrilled to have the dresses ready to give her - she and her mommy loved them!

I'm very biased, but I think she was one of the prettiest little egg hunters ever in her butterfly striped and ruffly dress when Easter weekend rolled around!

Jingle Bells, Jingle Dress, Jingle All the Way!

 "Mommy, can Aunt Lyssa make me a Christmas Dress that jingles?" my niece asked.

"I don't know if you can do this," my sister-in-law said over the phone, "but she has requested a Christmas Dress that jingles."

If I can't make my niece the exact dress she wants, then what even is the point of sewing for her? Of course I could make her a dress that jingled! I didn't know what it would look like (other than jingley), but I was sure I could make it happen!

I've stuck with fairly casual, kid friendly, easily washable, fabrics for my niece's Christmas dresses thus far, just barely dipping my toes into the fancy fabrics realm with last year's organza trimmed dress. This year however, I thought my niece would appreciate something fancier, almost princess-like. Satin and lace it would be!

 

I had a lovely cranberry colored embroidered net lace in my stash. (I believe I picked it up from the City Sewing Room at some point.) There was only a yard of it, so not a whole lot to work with, but enough to make it a focal point of the dress. (Along with the jingle bells of course!) One of the great things about kids clothes is they require way less fabric than adult clothes! Perfect for the smaller cuts of beautiful fabrics I've collected!

With the feature fabric and jingle bells decided on, I spent weeks pondering the design. How did one make an elegant, jingley, dress? I took to Pinterest to find some inspiration in vintage and historical kids clothes. The above lace child's dress from the early 20th century gave me a starting point. I liked the basque waist, bows, short puffed sleeves, and of course the lace overlay. All it was missing? A good place to attach jingle bells! (Also, I didn't think I had enough cranberry lace to use it for the entire dress. gone are the days I could make my niece a full skirted dress from only 1 yard of fabric. We're firmly in yard and a half territory now.) I found solutions for these two issues in mid-19th century children's dresses.

Those shoulder strap thingys? Called bretelles? (These were a feature on my purple ball gown you may remember. . .) They looked like an excellent base to attach jingle bells to! And, the way they divided up the bodice would give me a good way to break up the lace and make it stretch.

Plan formed, I went to my pattern stash to find a starting point.

I picked McCall's 3023, a recent acquisition from a thrift store. It featured a basque waist like I wanted, a square neckline (my favorite!), and the bodice was already divided up the way I wanted it to be. I would just need to lengthen the skirt and replace the shoulder ruffles with flat bretelles. 

Pattern picked, I went fabric shopping. After considering all the different options at Hobby Lobby, my mom helped me choose a bright gold satin for the bretelles and sleeve bands and a champaign colored satin to go under the cranberry lace. This would be a Christmas Dress fit for a princess!

Along with the fancy fabric, this dress would require some fancy sewing as well. I did more hand sewing on this dress than her previous three Christmas dresses put together! It started with basting together the lace and satin for the center sections of the bodice. . .

And ended with sewing on buttons, shoulder bows, and, of course, Jingle Bells!

I finished the dress in time to give it to my niece at Thanksgiving, so she would have it to wear the whole Christmas season. And she loved it!

I think the face says it all! 

She wore the dress for Christmas and spent the whole day showing off her bells to the whole family, shaking them, and singing "Jingle, Jingle, Jingle!"

As with previous years, I continued the tradition and made an ornament to match the dress. Thankfully I found a cranberry lace trim at a thrift store that worked for the skirt of the ornament! With the lace border at the hem of the dress being so distinctive, I wasn't sure how I was going to replicate it in ornament size! 

My sister-in-law tells me my niece loved hanging all her dresses on the Christmas tree this year, so the ornaments are definitely a tradition I need to continue!

I also wanted to continue the tradition I started last year of making my niece's baby doll a mating Christmas Dress (I loved dressing up like my dolls as a kid!), however, I ran out of time to get the doll's dress done before Christmas. I had it cut out, I just couldn't fit in getting it sewn. (much like my own Christmas dress. . .) So, as of this morning, a week after Christmas, I finished the doll dress. (My first finished sewing project of the new year!) I'll give it to my niece as a belated Christmas gift next time I see her. Sadly it's too late for her and Dolly to match at the Christmas gatherings, but atleast she'll have it for the memories right?

Doll dress aside, I think it's safe to say I made my niece's Jingle Dress dreams come true this Christmas - and I'm not sure I'll be able to top this next Christmas!

Happy New Year!

A Little Bit of Pretty Fabric and a Little Vintage Pattern

 A few weeks back I made the trek into the city to go to the City Sewing Room. I'd been resisting the temptation for months as it's quite a drive now and I hate the city traffic, but eventually, with Christmas sewing on my mind, I couldn't resist the call of cheap fabric any longer and I went.

I brought home 3 trash bags full of treasures that day (1.5 were full of yarn for my sister, so my fabric stash didn't grow too horribly much!), and among those treasures were two small cuts of quilting cotton with pretty metallic prints. One was ivory with gold fruits and vines all over, and the other was teal with gold ivy all other. The fabrics were so pretty together I had to get them, however with less than a yard and a half of fabric between the two I had no clue what I would use them for.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I was looking through my collection of children's patterns, looking for the right pattern to use for my niece's Christmas dress, and I came across a 1950's little girls' dress pattern in a size 3. It was an absolutely adorable design and I decided I'd better make it quickly before my niece out grew it. 

It wasn't quite right for the Christmas dress I had in mind, but then I remembered those metallic prints. Could it work? Would I be able to squeeze this design out of those small cuts of fabric? Well, it was worth a try! Shelving the Christmas Dress idea until the following week, I decided to make a go of this pattern and fabric combo.

It was tight, but it worked!

I had a full yard of the ivory print so I cut the body of the dress from that. I had to reduce the width of the skirt slightly to make it work, but this skirt was FULL so that wasn't a big deal. The end product was still satisfactorily swooshy. 

I used the teal for the collar, sleeve bands, bodice facing, and pockets.

My niece is a girl after my own heart and must have pockets!

I used every last scrap of both prints and lined the pockets and pretty scalloped collar with a bit of unbleached cotton muslin I had on hand.

I gave the dress to my niece on Thanksgiving, and she fell in love with it and decided to put it on right away.

That's the best sort of reaction to a handmade gift!

She wore it for all the festivities;

 Eating dinner, visiting with relatives, playing outside. 

She had an absolute blast playing in the leaves!

She assisted in burying her uncle in leaves.

So I had to come rescue him.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with our extended family - and I hope yours was equally sweet!

Happy Thanksgiving!