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I had a friend who asked if I'd show some of the different dresses that I have here,
and I said "Sure!" ... I've got about two hundred and thirty some,
that are from newborn size up to maybe size twenty eight. I don't know,
they don't have sizes written in them. Most of them, they're homemade.
But anyway, today I thought I'd start with the newborn ones
and show you a few of them, and how I made them.
'cause newborns kind of are made a little bit different than some of the rest.
Before we get started there's a little button right up here
you can click on. It says "subscribe",
and if you do that, when I post a new video, it will pop right up and you won't miss anything.
I don't have a newborn baby, but this is me holding a doll
wearing a dress my daughter wore when she was three weeks old.
This is the first dress I'm going to show you today.
When you have a newborn
they spend most the time laying down or
having you holding them something like this.
But, I got to figuring, since she lays down most of the time,
it wouldn't really matter too much
how the back looked, because no one would see it.
Plus babies do some horrible, explosive things in their costumes,
and you wouldn't want to have this getting ruined
the first time she wears it, by something bad happening.
I'm going to flip it over and show you how I made the back of the dress
I made it so it's a wrap-around... like this
so that when I layed her in the stroller I could actually open the dress like this
in case we had some kind of a diaper issues, that the dress wouldn't get ruined.
and another reason if i needed to change her... to change her all I had to do was just pull
the dress off
over the top. It was that easy.
And it could come off really easily. It was one big
wrap-around dress
I had a store-bought, little white blouse with a collar, but you could also go to one
of the baby stores... This is a Carter's newborn little white one-piece
"onesie" with a little bit of fancy trim.
But you could pick up something for a couple of dollars that way, ...
to make your life a little easier.
I have several examples here of little newborn baby dresses. This one has a
satin ribbon cross the bodice,
button holes on the apron waistband, that corresponds to a button sewn down
below on the dirndl front. And this keeps the apron from sliding around on
the dress and this one also has a wrap-around back.
This next one has stitching that looks like lacing, but it just stitches across the zig-zag.
And then you've got some ribbon and little daisy eyelet
and this one, the ribbon makes up the tie.
It's a cute woven, pink and white ribbon that you could just buy
off the roll, by the yard, at the stores.
A pink and white apron
Now the last one shows that you don't have to have a cute little pastel to make a baby,
newborn baby dress.
This one was worn by my granddaughter when she was three weeks old
It's a black skirt
purple and black bodice
and gold shiny ribbon here
and flowered trim around the waist that matches the mother's dress that she
also wore for Oktoberfest. And that was really fun.
If you're the mother of a newborn baby, you know you don't get anything extra done
during the day...It's all about the baby.
Even if you're an excellent seamstress, if you don't have time to get to it
then you're kind of sunk! So anyway, I started sewing at night, when my baby was sleeping.
I pulled out the fabric left over from two dresses I'd made
for the older sisters.
And what I had used, was something like this. This is a fabric that you can buy that has
all sorts of designs that are kind of coordinating colors
together. And I cut out some strips, that I had liked of this.
And when you use this, you have to really make sure that you've pre-shrunk this trim
and you've pre-shrunk your normal fabric. And if you don't,
you put two different kinds together
and then this shrinks different than the fabric
then you'll have kind of a puckery mess.
You don't want to have a puckery mess!
While the baby was sleeping,
I took a dress that fit her,
and I laid it out, and I kind of traced it onto paper,
and made a little pattern for the bodice.
Then I cut the bodice out of this regular cranberry fabric,
then I layed my fabric trim on it,
that i wanted, until I had it about how I wanted it to be. And I topstitched that on.
After I got that done
the bodice was kind of done.
Then I prepared my apron,
My apron I made blue, with another strip of fabric, kind of how this would be.
sewed that on... got it all ready...matched the sisters' ... everything's good!
then I sewed th skirt onto the dress
and got that all done
...sewed the apron on, then the trim
When the baby
woke up in the morning
I tried the dress on and i was really disappointed to find that the dress was
about two inches too short
so I added two inched of fabric here,
but I didn't really feel like...I knew I should but
I really didn't feel like taking this apart and
making another apron,
and making it longer
I was rather exhausted, and so I just let it go as-is.
And I think it probably was the first day of Oktoberfest. too, so there's no time to mess around
Okay, to the apron ties. They're each about fourteen inches long,
on each side,
The dress itself, the entire dress is about twelve inches long
and i think the skirt's nine inches. So, really if you're going to make
a nine inch skirt,
then I think your apron should be probably eight inches finished, or maybe even a little.
closer to the length here(skirt length)
And this whole thing was so easy, because it's all one piece
when you throw it in the wash "boom," it's all ready! You do have to iron it,
even if you pull it out of the dryer right away, it just doesn't have that crisp look
and I think when you starch it, it "resists" spills a little bit better, too
When it comes to babies, there's lots of drooling and
things happening, that you might want to "resist" your spills.
So I would suggest that you starch it. That's a good idea.
Well I would recommend if you're making a dress for a lady who might have a little baby in the next few years
that you buy some extra fabric, (maybe you need eight inches extra), and you could just put it away
and you can just put it away
And then if you do need to make a little baby girl dress you've got it and it could match the mother,
or it could match the two other sisters.
and if you just buy the fabric ahead of time, then you'll have it right there ready to go
go
and making the dress, you don't have to wait until the baby is born.
Because you can make a wrap-around style like this that would fit most any baby
that would be, I don't know,
six to twelve pounds. This really would fit quite a few
different sizes the way I did it.
And you'll have alot more fun at Oktoberfest,
if the whole family's dressed up- even the baby!
If you or your daughter are expecting a baby a month or two before Oktoberfest, don't wait until
the last minute to make your dress.
Most people who sew have little strips of
fabric, lace, eyelet, ribbon
that they have in a little box somewhere. You pull that out
and to make a baby dress
it probably wouldn't cost you anything because you've already got all this in your sewing boxes somewhere.
And I think this was a really satisfying thing for me to do
frustrating, at the same time it was satisfying.
And I've also learned a lot. I think everything I make,
there's a lesson to be learned
like: Don't make your apron too short. And check
before you
finish your hem off
to make sure that you don't
have a dress that's too short.
And don't sew at the last minute when you need it
tomorrow morning
so if you have time, do it ahead.
And this time of year, here we are, it's October,
almost November
you have plenty of time before Oktoberfest
to make a lot of fun things, including Oktoberfest dresses for your babies.
Now if you're expecting a baby and you don't know how big it's going to be,
because mostly we don't know
I would suggest a wrap-around dress like this for the newborn
and that takes away all the guesswork, it'll fit no matter what.
And if you're not really sure what size a newborn is, you can go to the store and buy one of
these little dolls
and you can dress her up
and then all year round the doll can wear the dress at your house, too.
Then when your grandchildren
come to play
they can play with the doll wearing a cute little dirndl
because we know, wearing dirndls is lots of fun!