Dresses of White

In June Cora will be blessed

and

In July Jetta will have her 8th birthday

and be baptized.

Two special occasions deserve two special dresses!

 

So I got all my supplies together and began.

The absolute, without question, worst part of sewing

is cutting it out.  Once you get past that

the "Fun" starts!

 

The first of Many Hours at both the

sewing machine and the serger...look, I'm still smiling!

Above I'm working on a ruffle that actually got

ripped off and never used...hmmm...

does that give you an idea of how one of the dresses went?

Since Cora was too young to tell me what kind of

dress she wanted

Trudi & I went shopping and decided for her...

didn't we do a nice job?

Cora's dress went together beautifully.

first time, first try, done in 2 days.

The detail is always hard to see in pictures, but

here you can see a little bit of the 

ribbon, lace, & buttons, with bows and 

small pearl rosettes at the waistline.

Jetta's dress on the other hand did not go together on the

first try...or the second....partially on the third 

and finally all together on the fourth try

and second fitting.

Jetta told me she wanted her dress to be

long and silky with sparkles.

(She is a fancy frilly kind of girl for sure)

So right from the start, picking out material to 

everything else along the way, this dress was

trouble with a capital T.

I'm not sure you want to hear the whole story,

but I ended up having to take the dress almost

completely apart three times.  

The end result being entirely different

than the beginning design.

I enlisted the help of my Heavenly Father and

as I lay awake remaking the dress in my mind the

solutions came to me one by one until

the dress was finally finished.

From long waisted to high waisted, from small sash

to wide ribbon sash, from two layers to one,

from lower ruffle to no ruffle and 

plain neckline to pearl trimmed sweetheart neckline,

I ended up spending many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to

fix the ugliest dress I had ever made.

But as you can see, after all the "stepping back",

"hair pulling", "sleepless nights" and "what am I going to do now"

moments - Jetta is in love with her dress

and can't wait for August when she will 

finally get to wear it.

(I am keeping it at my house until her birthday)

The ribbon is trimmed with a satin rosette and small flowers

with rhinestone centers.  The sleeves are gathered up

the middle with a rhinestone flower at the top of the gathers.

A string of pearls outline the neckline and the other

satin rosette is a clip for her hair.

These two dresses were  definitely made with

lots of love...otherwise at least one of them would be

in the trash!

Both the dresses turned out beautiful and will

be just perfect for each of my little

granddaughters.

p.s.

Thank you mom for teaching me how to sew

and not to give up when things don't go as 

smoothly as you'd like them too.

Love You!