I have sewn exactly three articles of clothing in my entire life. One was a skirt in 8th grade sewing class, one was a skirt in high school, and the last was a simple sheath dress right after I got home from my mission. In my sewing class, I had copious amounts of help from my teacher, Mrs. Allan, and it took me the entire semester to make the skirt, although I did get an A+ on it. The second skirt and the sheath dress were sewn under the direction of my mother, and in fact, she ended up sewing most of the dress. So why I got it into my head that I could sew Sarah's baptism dress with her on the other side of the ocean, I don't know. But I did, and once I get something into my head, and don't tend to give up easily.
Stubborn I may be, but not completely stupid. Before investing in a pattern and material, I made sure to line up some professional help, should I need it. There are two women in the ward here who are very experienced sewers, so I asked them if they would be willing to help me, should I need it. Armed with their reassuring offers of assistance, I drove off to the fabric store and bought all I would need to whip up this little piece of haute couture.
As soon as I got home, I lost all confidence and asked Tanya if she would help me cut out the pattern. She graciously agreed to sacrifice an entire morning to the cause and I took Noah and Alexandra over to play with her boy Jasper while we cut up the fabric. We had gotten halfway through when I noticed a funny little warning, written in German on the pattern. Something about needing to add in a seam allowance. When I mentioned it to Tanya, she stopped cutting immediately and came over to read the pattern with me. Yeah, the pattern I bought didn't include a seam allowance at all, you had to add that in yourself. Fortunately, I had bought quite a bit extra of the material, and we had caught the discrepancy in time, so were able to start over. I didn't want to hassle with measuring and marking all over each individual pattern piece, so we just cut a good eyeballed inch around each piece and called it good.
When I got home, I traced around the pattern with a fabric pencil, and used that as the line to sew on. Once I finally got ready to actually sew the dress together, it was rather easy. Pinning the pieces took some time, as I wanted to make sure and get them just exactly right together. Also, I ended up having to remove some stitches after I discovered I had done it wrong, but nothing that wasn't able to easily be fixed. You can tell I made the dress myself, it definitely doesn't look perfect. But it fits, it's even, and Sarah loved it, so I am happy. As soon as it was done, I had her put it on and she had a modeling session with Papa. These are some of my favorite photos they took. And now I am inspired to sew even more dresses for the girls.
