Dresses for my Grand daughters....I amazed myself!

My oldest grand daughter is 8 and a Brownie Girl Scout. Her troop is putting on a program  with several other troops about other countries in the world and each troop chose a country.... hers chose the Ukraine. The troop contacted someone to make the outfits for the girls in the troop. 

 But she has 2 little sisters and my DIL asked me to make the sisters dresses to match so that they can kind of be part of the troop since they will all be there together anyway.  My DIL sent me a picture of this dress and asked if I could make one similar for the  2 sisters.  I thought, okay, a pheasant blouse, an apron and a elastic waist skirt.. and some embellishments of ribbon and lace. Yeah, I could do that.  I couldn't find a pheasant blouse pattern so I bought a kind of A-line dress with a regular bodice, took bodice pieces  and altered them to make a blouse, added some ribbons and lace and piece of the print fabric and made the blouses with a zipper back.

                      

Now just so you know... I haven't made childrens clothes in 12 years! Last I made was for my (then) 2 year old grand daughter. I made her 13 outfits for her second birthday. Before that, it was probably 15 years since I made clothes last. I made all my own clothes through high school and I made all my daughters clothes from birth  through 5th grade. I'll never forget the day she asked me "Mom, can I have a store bought dress?" I knew then that she was growing up and it was time to start accepting it!



This is the grand daughter in Brownies and this is the dress contracted by the troop. She really enjoys Brownies.(I heard later that she was jealous of her sisters dresses! She likes theirs better than hers especially since I made them! I am happy to hear it, but sad to have made her feel that way!

 The apron is about 1/2 a yard gathered into a waist band and the skirt is  1 yard with elastic casing in the waist.The skirt is from "back in the day" when my mom taught me how to make a skirt. with no pattern....measure fabric twice the measurement of the waist and as long as you want it to be and sew together. Sew casing on "top" of skirt and insert elastic and hem!


I used common sense to make the apron..it is just half the skirt with a waist band and ties! I added alot of lace, ribbon and ric-rac and a strip of the print fabric to the apron. I always hated hemming so I found a way around it and just folded the bottom edge under and then sewed lace on top!

So I was able to create and make the outfits for my two little GD's. One likes pink the other likes blue! I was happy that I hadn't lost my "touch" when it came to little girls dresses and working with no pattern!

TA-DA!

                  

I am not looking to make to many more, as I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy it like I used to. What I enjoyed was just knowing I could do still do it...if I wanted to! And yes, I hear you "Cheri, you are Nanny.... you know you will make more!" I know  I will!  But I will probably choose an easy pattern and just add lots of frills!

They made the headbands themselves! Aren't they the cutest?

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