Lovely lace toddler dress

We recently went to a lovely wedding, the first we've been to since we had our daughter. And she was also invited! Of course that meant I had to make her a beautiful lace dress.

I chose to use the Amsterdam dress from Little Lizard King again, you can see others I've made here and here.

This embroidered lace is so lovely and soft and I had no idea how to work with it! Thankfully this time I was organised so I had plenty of time to play with new fabrics. Even the navy rayon twill I used underneath was new to me. It is also lovely and soft, but slippery and a little stretchy - not something I like to work with.

I got there in the end, the biggest hurdle was stopping the embroidered bits of lace from unravelling. Some I unpicked completely where they weren't connected to the rest. And wherever needed, I stitched two rows over the embroidery in the seam allowance. I had to consider which colour thread I used as well - I used a golden yellow or light blue in the embroidered sections, and for the seams where it was just tulle I used navy so it blended into the navy dress underneath. Everything needs a lot more thought and planning when the seams are visible!

And of course I completely forgot to take a before photo which means you get to see the end result of a toddler wearing a lace dress. Luckily even with the runs in the fabric, and where parts of embroidery are completely unravelling it still looks nice. Hopefully she gets another chance to wear her fancy dress again before she outgrows it!

Origami Crane Birthday Dress

For my niece's first birthday I decided to make her a Junebug Dress. I spent ages trying to pick the fabric (mum kept pointing out girly pink ones) until we finally found some cute fabric with origami cranes on it. Perfect gift from an aunty who loves making origami!

I also used my Silhouette machine to design a first birthday card for my niece and nephew which I added their name to on a banner (the blurry section).

The Junebug Dress fastens with the front flap and buttons, while the dress fit my niece, we found it difficult to get the dress on and off so I ended up adding a beautiful red lace zipper to the back. Installing that zip to a completed dress - that wasn't meant to have one - proved a bit difficult, but it looked good in the end.

Wedding - Part 1

When we started planning our wedding I wanted to do as much DIY as I could – obviously I couldn't do as much as I wanted but I thought I could share my ideas with you.

I wanted our wedding to be a bit different, not what everyone was expecting. For starters I wore a red and black dress that I got made in China. It was my second dress that I ordered as they made it to the wrong measurements. I chose a different company, and a different dress and got it made in a standard size – which didn’t fit me properly. I took it to a dressmaker to get it fixed but she said no (because she believed a bride should wear white)! So my talented mum fixed my dress and made it perfect! She also made her own dress while fixing mine and also altering my little sisters bridesmaid dress and making the sash I wanted.

Instead of holding bouquets of flowers I bought lace parasols that also had matching fans - mine were black and my sisters were white. I spent a lot of time trying out origami and beaded flowers but I didn’t really like any that I made.

Instead of flower boutonnieres I made them using feathers that I dyed red and black. I made those for my husband and his best man, our fathers and grandfathers and for our mums and grandmothers I added some beads in with the feathers. I also made mine and my sisters hair pieces out of the red and black feathers but added peacock feathers as well.

For our bon bons I wanted something different that reflected both of us a little. I found these mini metal bookmarks that you could decorate yourself and thought they were perfect. Ray and I both enjoy reading, as does a lot of our family so I thought they could be rather handy for a lot of our guests. They worked out to about $1 each in materials. I used moonstone because I like the colourful sheen they have in them. These also started the ideas I had for the full size metal bookmarks I make. We also had little red heart lollipops on the tables for the guests.