Since sending the last package out I have not been keeping up with my goal of making one dress per week. Life gets in the way and before I know it two weeks have gone by without anything to show for it. I have managed to sew together three more dresses, though.

Dress #13

My mom gave me this pillowcase and I was quickly inspired. I didn’t want it to be too froo-froo, but I knew that it had to have a hint of girliness to match the flowers. The flowers are bright yellow and orange with accents of a deep pink. I found just the right pink in my collection of binding, and then I saw the spool of green ribbon and knew that it would set off the hem beautifully. I wanted something a little different, so I added the offset bow. I think that it turned out nice.

Dress #14

I found this fabric in the red dot fabric section of JoAnn’s. It has such a fun print on it that I was worried about not getting the right look for it. With so much going on I didn’t want the poor girl to be overwhelmed. I knew that it had to have a wide ruffle to make it twirly, so that was easy. Luckily I had the right color red ribbon to set it all off.

Here’s a close-up of the material…

Ice cream cones and popsicles! What could be better? And of course, the lace on the hem to make it feminine.

Dress #15

This one was a little harder. It’s not easy to find ribbon or lace in a deep dark blue. I was given these pillowcases and I knew that I had to fancy them up a little. I have three more of these pillow cases and am trying to find different ways to dress them up. I don’t want any of them to look the same. What fun would that be??

I do worry about the pillow case dresses, though. When I was first starting to make these I was looking for ideas and came across a website for another Dresses for Missions group in the Midwest. These ladies, however, would not accept any dresses actually made out of pillow cases. They said that the pillow case dresses weren’t very fancy or pretty and so they wanted you to sew other designs of sun dresses for the girls who would receive them. Originally my group was told not to do anything too fancy because they wanted us to churn these out at a decent rate. I can completely understand that desire, but I can’t bring myself to make a dress without adding my own touches to it. I guess that I just want to give every little girl who gets one of my dresses the feeling that she has something beautiful and special. Whether I add lace or a big ol’ ruffle, I want her to put it on and have the instant desire to twirl around in it.

In order to accomplish this, I’ve managed to create an ever-growing collection of ribbon and lace. My biggest issue, though, is that I hate paying full price for them. I’m so cheap! What I do is stalk the red dot clearance fabric to score good deals on the material, and then I’ve discovered that almost every other week Hobby Lobby puts their spooled ribbon and lace on sale for 50% off. Even if it’s not on sale, if I happen across a spool of trim that I know instantly which fabric I can pair it with, it goes in the cart. If I keep adding to my collection, though, I might have to ask Jay to design something that I can use to better organize it.

Like I did with my spools of thread and bobbins. As you’ve noticed, I sew many different colors of dresses so I keep spools of thread on hand to quickly switch out when needed. I was running into the issue where I would have to rustle around to find the bobbin with the correct color thread, and when I grabbed it I would often end up grabbing the end of another bobbin and unwinding it. It was getting a bit irritating.

I asked Jay if he could please print something for me that would keep the pairs together in an organized fashion. I did a VERY rough and bad sketch of what I had in mind and he did the rest. Isn’t it great??

Due to the size, the rods that he originally designed to print on the platforms didn’t work out. They kind of just smudged together. Instead he designed holes in the platforms and then used some tubing that he had for airplane stuff to make the rods that spear my spools and bobbins.

Aren’t they great?!

Speaking of the 3D printer, I’ll post this update here for you. Remember these cookie cutters that I told you Jay had made for me?

Cat Cookies!!!! Jay did a great job with this. The tails didn’t break off when removing them from the sheet of dough. What made me laugh, though, is that if you look closely at the cat that is standing up (kind of in the middle bottom area of the picture) you can see that when it baked it browned on all of the points… just like a Siamese! Awww…. kitties!!!

🙂