Dipsy Duds

We're having a great time with Dipsy! It's so fun to have her here--she makes everything we do feel like an adventure. Usually when she comes, I have some big project I want to tackle and usually she just eggs me on with it. Since we moved here 3 years ago, she's helped me: decorate my living room (she's a furious furniture shopper!); organize and install shelving in my shed; paint my bedroom and bathroom; move and organize hundreds of books; refinish and paint my kitchen cabinets; and makeover Tess' bedroom (remember the towering lattice wall?).

Well, this time she's actually been having a pretty laid back visit. We've had lots of relaxing time playing with baby. For our project, I wanted Mom to help me make a sundress for Tess. I've had lots of practice making baby blankets now, and I thought I was ready to expand my sewing skills beyond stitching two square pieces of fabric together.

So Mom and Tess and I spent at least an hour looking at fun fabrics, patterns and notions and dreaming up cute, simple dresses we could make for the Tessling. There was a bright, summery pink patterned fabric that I loved and we had fun ideas to incorporate ribbon trims and colored stitching. We picked out cute contrasting fabric for the bloomers. We also considered making an all-white dress with colorful ribbon accents. We thought it would be cute and easy to make simple straps that would tie in a bow on the shoulder. I thought about sewing on faux buttons for decoration (since I'm not going to attempt the buttonholer).

Anyway, long story long, we decided to check out the baby clothes before we left, just to see if anything good was on clearance. And there, in the baby department was EVERY DRESS WE'D CONSIDERED SEWING--ALREADY MADE! The bright summery, pink one with contrasting fabric; a cute lime green one with ribbon and faux button accents; and an all-white one with colorful stitching and ribbon details. WE COULDN'T BELIEVE IT! And each dress cost less than half of what it would cost for us to buy the materials to make the dress. So, we put back all the sewing materials we'd gather to make one of the dresses, and then bought ALL 3 ready-made dresses!

I know the whole point was for me to practice sewing, but you kind of get to the point where you think, "What's the point?" Sewing the dress probably would have turned out to be a lot of expensive aggravation.

Since we saved so much time not sewing a dress, we had a whole lot of time to take pictures of Tessie in her new summery duds. They're still a little big on her--they are sundresses, after all, and we've been a little short on the sun lately. But they should fit her nicely once summer finally rolls around.

Tessie's been getting in a lot of Dipsy love. I need to get some more pics of Tess with her Dip, but here are a couple cute ones of the baby love fest. We don't want Dipsy to go home!