Fairy Godmother

....well, not quite.  I do, however, have a new goddaughter--my first infant!  (My other godchildren were received into the Church as adults).  As the parents are also very new converts, I offered to make the gown and bonnet, which ended up being a pretty fun project.  I went with Robert Kaufman's cotton voile and ordered a yard, which is close to 60" wide.  I also ordered a lace swag thing to use for the overskirt, figuring it was probably cheaper than sourcing something by the yard and easier to work with.  I have loads left, so I could even make a lacy overskirt for myself or one of the girls at some point.

 Next was a pattern.  I don't have many baby patterns (and no newborn anything) because I didn't start sewing for my girls until they were toddlers, but I did have the Made By Rae Geranium, and wanted something like that.  I was on a tight deadline, however, and wasn't looking forward to grading the thing (the parents asked us less than two weeks before the proposed baptism date, during which time we had to get ready for school, the girls were in two weddings, and Birdie had a birthday.  As it happened, the baptism was pushed off a week, which helped my timeline considerably).  

After looking around a bit, I realized Rae made a free 0-3 month version of the Geranium!  It doesn't have sleeves so I decided to draft some.  I looked at various sleeve drafting methods, and then found a great tutorial here, which worked great. The dress pattern is pretty straightforward, particularly since I've made it in a larger size for my girls, and my only change was to make the skirt longer than drafted so it looked more baptismal gown-like.  I think I went with 18", but can't remember exactly.

The front

The back

The tricky part was figuring how how to sandwich the sleeve in between the outer bodice and the self-lining, but I got there in the end.  I wanted the insides to be as clean as the outsides on this, so I did French seams where I could, and sandwiched what I couldn't into the lining.  

The lace overskirts did give me a bit of a pain, as I struggled to figure out the best way to cut them, and the fabric was extremely slippery.  In the end, I used two layers cut into rectangles according to the pattern, but lengthened considerably. 

Clean insides!

The only 'clean edge' goof I made was to finish the waist seams together with the self-lined bodice, so I ended up laying down a strip of fabric over the edge like bias tape and whip stitching it to the bodice lining by hand.  I had already installed the overskirts and zig-zagged the edges with all the gathering, and I just couldn't see my way to unpicking ALL that just to get the lining edge out.  It looked great and worked well.  

Before I sewed anything on the dress, I put a tiny strip of knit interfacing in the middle of the bodice and embroidered a little Orthodox cross in bone colored DMC floss.  I wanted it to be tone-on-tone, but also to stand out slightly, and that worked perfectly.  

 

I used some vintage white buttons on the back, and added some lace trim from my stash to the neck and sleeves, since the bodice looked very plain against all that lace on the skirt.  I think the lace came from my gram, but I'm not 100% certain about that.  It was the perfect size and scale, and I put it on at the 11th hour, so I was very grateful to have it in my bin o' trims!

After the dress was finished, I set about making a bonnet.  Time was running short, so I knew I wouldn't have time to make booties, so I ordered some cotton crocheted ones that turned out to be much nicer than anything I could have made anyway.  I also wasn't interested in paying for a hat pattern, so a little bit of searching got me to the Purl Soho Baby Sunbonnet, which was the perfect shape.  

My yard of voile was nearly gone by this point, but I made it!  I have one small rectangle of fabric left, maybe 40x18."  Not bad for a $20 dress and cap.  

For the bonnet, I sewed a lace layer together with the outer layer, treating them as one layer, and then added a lace overlay that hangs over the edge, but it actually ended up looking better to have the lace overlay hang off the back, so if I do this again, I'll skip the overlay all together.  Since it is self-lined, the insides are very clean.  

The last thing was to decorate the candle, and I admit, I did leave this a bit late (in my defense, it was the first week of school!) and when I got out my florals to have at it, I realized I could put one of the corsages my mom made for my wedding on the candle and call it good, so that's what I did.  I tied a tiny strip of lace from the dress scraps to give it a little bit of swag.  It looked perfect, and I was glad to have a use for the corsage, which would otherwise just sit in a box until kingdom come.

The service was beautiful, even though I was juggling godmother duties with choir duties.  

Multi-tasking!

Ponchik helped me with the candle, and one of the other kids took over as photographer (another friend took pictures as well; hers are the brightly lit ones).  Birdie's photos are interesting, though.  She's got a good eye, though.  So creative, that one. 

We are so blessed to join this new little family, and to have them be part of ours.  Our kids are thrilled to have a baby around regularly, and there is no shortage of baby minders!  Boo in particular loves the babies and always wants to hold her.  As for me, I love holding a baby and doing the bouncing that the very little ones need (I've been called a baby whisperer a time or two, which I find slightly hilarious, given my own kids' babyhoods), but I'm also happy to hand them back to mama or papa when it is time to go.