Christening Gown and More

I am all over the place today but the bottom line is I spent hours all having to do with sewing and that's always a good thing.

What you see at left is the palette for my next "little" project. We have another baby girl on the way in the family and I am going to do a puffed sleeve little number for her baby shower gift that will have beads, ric rac, and more. I am itching to cut this out but you know my rule, only two projects at a time! Tonite I finished the christening gown and the slip. I spent all day on the slip today. It is not my best work but it is pretty and will go under the gown beautifully. It has a hand embroidered monogram of the baby's initials and birth date, some entredeaux, and some shell stitching which I love. I think I put more work into the slip than I did the gown. I pretty much did 90% of the work on the slip today. Tomorrow all will get a good press and I hope to have pictures and a post for you. Till then here's a few teasers:
For the monogram I played around with Word. I did my first effort in a satin stitch and was not happy with it at all. The satin stitch made the monogram out of scale to the tiny garment. I regrouped and decided to do the entire motif in a tiny backstitch in pale pale pink floss, one strand. This was a much more delicate treatment, appropriate for a little baby.
Next came the lace shaping. For the lace I used some of my antique lace. It has a header thread which is absolutely necessary for lace shaping. You can see on my pic above that there are little dots from a drafting pencil in a heart shape around the initials. Then the inside edge of the lace was pinned to the dots, the header pulled to shape it, and the whole thing steam pressed.
Sound simple but its actually pretty fussy work.





When it was all done, the inside edge of the lace was stitched. The background was then cut away right up to the lace. This was then laid on the bodice and the outside edge was stitched to the bodice. I did a basic zigzag. I just didn't feel like taking time to do pin stitching. I think it looks nice anyway. Then after the outside edge of the lace was stitched the interior of the heart "base fabric" (the bodice) was cut away .
And here we go. Once this was done I proceeded to make the slip, doing a shell stitch on all neck and armholes and the hem, and entredeaux between the bodice and the gathered skirt. More pics tomorrow when that is all pressed up.







And if that isn't enough, when I went to town today I hit the fabric store and finally came up with buttons for the cashmere jacket. I brought my sample of fabric to the store with slits cut in it and auditioned lots of buttons. I have been unable to find anything on line that works. I got it down to three choices and proceeded to hit on every person in the store to get their opinion. Most lined up with my opinion and here it is, live and in person from JHB:
...........................Bunny