Sewing A Dress

This is a delayed Halloween note (a month late). Child #2 wanted to be Mary, the Mother of Jesus, for Halloween. Rather than do the smart thing (like my neighbor) and jimmie up an easy “make do” costume or pay $6 + shipping for a dress and drape a small white sheet around her, I picked up some blue & white fabric and some sewing patterns.

For the record, I am a pretty good hand sewer – in terms of patching things mostly. The last time I sewed something from a pattern with a machine was a pillow in seventh or eighth grade Home Ec class. For over a week, for a couple of hours each night, I worked on a dress and a cape. Here is a picture of the dress – finished but not yet “cleaned up” of all my marks and stray thread:

I designed it so the dress would fit my oldest when Halloween was over. The questions was, would we want it seen by the light of day?

My husband’s response when he saw it, “It turned out very different than I thought it would.” I chuckled in response and he wondered aloud if I had taken his comment the wrong way.

Indeed not! I knew exactly what he meant. He was expecting a shapeless shift with perhaps a rope for a waist tie. That is not what I showed him as a finished produce. The finished product has plenty of war wounds and “learning opportunities” and it won’t stand serious scrutiny. But, it wasn’t bad for a first try. My husband said I can make “all the dresses” for the girls. NO THANKS!

. . . But, maybe I’ll attempt a First Communion Dress. You never know.