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Easy Breezy Baby Dress

My little sweet pea was already two months old before I got around to sewing her any clothes, and now she's three months old before I'm getting around to blogging about it!  (I did crochet a little dress for her before she was born, but she outgrew it before she was four days old.)  My sister Elise did make her a dress that I loved, though:


Elise also made her headband.  Isn't it cute?


These pictures are from July 2, when she was three weeks old.  I loved the dress for its ease of getting on and off of her, and of course the cuteness factor.  The pattern Elise used is Simplicity 1794.


She let me borrow the pattern, but it turns out some of the pieces are missing!  My guess is she has them pinned to fabric for another dress somewhere in a pile of projects.  I've done the same thing.  So I went to JoAnn's to buy my own, but it was out of stock.  No problem, I can reverse-engineer the pattern from the finished dress!  So that's exactly what I did.

I had recently bought three fat quarter bundles of coordinating fabrics at JoAnn's, and I had great fun picking out which fabrics to use together for a total of five new dresses!  Here are the fabric bundles:




I selected these five pairings:






Here is the first dress, finished and modeled by the sweet pea:


As you can see, I made the dress body and the contrast band at the hem a bit longer, in order to get more wear out of it as she grows.  The back neckline of the dress has elastic, so it should fit her for a while.


You can also see that she is quite the wiggle worm!  It was difficult to get a single non-blurry photo!  :p



At least she has fun!


I also took some later that evening when we went on our daily walk.  She was more still and calm in the stroller:


And the same headband works well with this dress, too!


These pictures were taken August 31, so I am very behind in posting them!  Sweet pea is not quite three months old here:


One of the great things about this pattern is that it only takes two fat quarters to make a dress!  And I have a bit of leftover fabric that I might make into some cute headbands or shoes or something.

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