Holiday Preparations

Merry Christmas to All. We're getting ready to visit our children so I'm doing some last minute preparations. This morning I finished the two bags I've been working on all week. One is for my daughter-inlaw and the other is for her mother. I've also made cranberry-orange relish for our holiday dinner on Sunday. After lunch I'm going to bake a chocolate chip cake so that my grandson can decorate it and possibly make some lemon bars to take with us in addition to the chocolate chip cookies and rugelah that I baked yesterday.

Fun With Smocking

A few weeks ago I saw this smocking plate and decided to smock it and use it as part of a jumper for my granddaughter. The hand smocking was done on cotton fabric and the jumper is made of fine wale corduroy. I can't wait to see a picture of her wearing the jumper.

Gifts for the older two flower girls

The flower girls in their dresses

My dress for the wedding

The Ultimate Project

The Ultimate Project

The ultimate project for me was the designing and making of my daughter's wedding gown and bolero, three dresses for her flower girls and a dress for myself. I started this project in November of 2008 and completed all of the dresses several days before August 15, 2009, the date of the wedding. In addition to the dresses, I also made dresses and slips for Bitty Baby Twins that my daughter gave to the flower girls as gifts.
The fabric for the wedding gown and flower girls' dresses came from Sposa Bella in Manhattan and the fabric for the bodice of my gown came from Mood fabrics. The skirt and jacket fabric for my gown was purchased on a trip to Singapore several years before.
The most stressful part of all of this sewing was that I was the only one local. The bride lives in D.C. , two of the flower girls live in Chicago and one lives in North Jersey. That meant that I had to fit the dresses when I could and not too often. In the end though, all of the dresses fit well and I was thrilled with them and so were the bride and flower girls.