Most recently I made my first-ever set of Mother-Daughter dresses.
I combined a pattern for a dress and a pattern for a top to make the adult dress. It has hidden nursing slits behind the vest.
I didn't have a pattern for the baby dress. I wanted a romper with a skirt, or you could say a dress with attached bloomers that snap between the legs for diaper access.
I took an outfit we already had and just lay it on the floor with white paper and started tracing. Then I cut out the pieces I traced, laying them back over the dress to determine shape.
Finally, I wanted to upsize the dress to 24m from 18m size, so I added the appropriate amount around the seams. Last, I used some fabric that I had gotten for $1/yard to make a "prototype" dress.
It actually was the same $1/yard fabric I'd made my mom dress out of, and the prototype turned out perfect, making us our first Mother-Daughter set, which you saw above.
The entire purpose of making the prototype dress, however, was to sew a daughter dress for another lady, who had a Motherwear dress that needed repaired. When we called the company to ask
if they had extra pieces of fabric around that we could use to repair the Mother's dress, they sent us enough fabric to make a matching dd's dress.
Here is the prototype dress with the dress I made for the other woman:
This little pants and vest outfit is one I made for my eldest son when he was 3. The vest is made from a quilted material I'd bought to cover a drafty window, lined with some white flannel leftover from making diapers. I did have problems with the green bleeding onto the white, which was a valuable lesson in prewashing all material before using it. :-) I didn't have a pattern for the vest, I just used the jacket pattern from the below outfit and adapted it. The pantslegs are the same length, despite how they appear to be hanging from that peg. LOL
This little outfit is fully reversible, pants and top. I made this when we lived in cold Colorado winters, so having flannel-lined cordoroy was not just a luxury. This was Jacob's Christmas outfit when he was 1. He wore it with a white turtleneck. Both his younger brothers wore it too. I could never decide which combination I liked, so every time he wore it, I had it different. The pants: on the red plaid side they have a sort of a french seam-- I say sort of because usually french seams are nice and delicate, but due to the fabric involved it's pretty bulky looking. However, I ended up getting used to the way it looked to the point of liking it. :-) I didn't do the patch on the seat on both "views" of the pants. I didn't have a reversible pattern, I made this up as I went along.
This is the first nursing dress I made. I didn't have a pattern, so I was again adapting as I went along. I also wanted it to fit me while pregnant, and this pattern had plenty of room in it for that. It's just one of those $1.88 patterns from Wal-Mart, I'd have to go dig to find it. It was one that was in the racks displayed special around Easter last year, and it had a daughter dress I think.
I did the nursing openings as double vertical slits. To do them, I used my buttonhole function on my machine, but just made really big buttonholes. I think I did them 8" long. Then I ripped the slits open with my seam ripper. The overlay is just a repeat of the bodice, hemmed with a cute piece of pre-printed material that ends up with printing on the inside of the hem so that when I'm nursing with the top folded up instead of bunched, I don't get wrinkles in the bodice and it looks finished.
This dress is not a nursing dress, tho with princess seams I'm sure I could adapt it. I made this when my firstborn was 6 months old, to wear for Easter.
I've a rather petite figure, and neither dress really fit me well in the shoulders. I had to make the dresses to fit my more maternal frame (ok, so how do you describe your motherly look?) but the "Big 3" patterns all assume that you are 5'11" tall if you have a 40" bust and 32" waist. So the torso turns out too long for me and the shoulders fit poorly, causing the dress to gape open at my neck which I find just a little too revealing. Haha.
That's why I really don't plan to make another dress for myself until I get my duct tape dress form made.
Oh, where did I find the link to that? .... Duct Tape Double
Oops, Ignore that link. Apparently the woman decided to take it off lineto make it so that she could charge people money for
the instructions.
I know I printed them up around here somewhere.... How hard can it be really, to figure out how to wrap myself
with duct tape, cut it off and then tape the seam back together and stuff the thing? Hmmm....
email me at mtnmama@oocities.com
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