Christina's Baby Shower

Last September, I found out that a friend of mine was pregnant and shortly thereafter that it was going to be girl.  I immediately thought...I get to make dresses!!!  I started pattern shopping and settled on this:

I decided to do view C and D.

The baby shower was yesterday (Saturday) and I just got started Thursday...thank God for the snow day!  I started view C first, but realized I did not have enough tulle.  The package says you need 72" tulle, but I had 52".  (As an aside, I don't think I've ever seen 72" fabric.)  I ended up being just short one pattern piece and because it was snowing hard outside, I could not run back out to get more fabric.  I did as much as I could do and then switched to view D.  I encountered the same problem with the tulle so I decided to just make a simple overlay using this purple sparkly giraffe tulle:

Since I was on a time crunch, I omitted the flower also:

Friday after work, I raced to the fabric store to get more fabric for view C.  Came home and got to work.  To my horror, after I cut out the new tulle, sewed it together and tried gathering it, I realized it was way to much fabric.  It was as tight as I could make it and it was still twice the size of the skirt.  (When I was cutting it out the first time, I thought this really seems like way too much fabric for a newborn dress, but I followed the pattern anyway).  After panicking for a few minutes, I decided to cut off the access.  This is how much I cut:

Here's my finished dress:

View C

Without the extra tulle the skirt is still very full and in my opinion bulky at the waist.  I hope it doesn't bother the baby.

I love these dresses!!!!  I can't wait to get pics of the baby wearing them.  :)

I also decided to do a bear rug (McCall's 6719) because that's my new go to gift.  Here it is:

Fleece Navidad

This year, I decided to give everyone in the fam a gift and to make things easier on myself, I decided to make fleeces.  

For the little kids, I made McCall's 6222:

(pattern reviewed here)

For the teenagers, I made McCall's 5538 view A:

(pattern reviewed here)

... and McCall's 6252 view A with the pocket from view C:

(pattern reviewed here)

And for the adults, I made McCall's 5538 view B:

(pattern reviewed here)

I don't want to touch fleece ever again....  :)

For Yelena

On June 21st my cousin gave birth to this little cutie:

For months I've been planning on making her a quilt, but I just can't seem to get going on that project.  In the meantime, I decided to make her a dress.  Since this is my first attempt at making something so small, I decided to go with an "easy" pattern - McCall's 6015:

Here's my version:

It's not perfect, but it's pretty good if I say so myself.  :)

Design changes:
I completely enclosed the zipper...the pattern only has it enclosed on the bodice.

I also added a lace overlay to make it dressier.

Originally, I planned to use this as the overlay:

..but it was just too bulky to work with.

I went back to the fabric store and got this:

...which was much much easier to work with.
I also made bias tape out of the fabric remnants to enclose the raw edges of the lace:

Now I'm just waiting on my cousin to send me the baby's measurements so I can make the panty.  In the meantime, I guess I'll get back to the quilt...

UPDATE 8/11

I finally made the matching panties: