Early Easter Dresses

I made the girls' Easter dresses a little early this year.  I have a couple more months until the baby arrives, so am getting non-baby sewing out of the way.  I still have a blanket to finish, a new baby bag, a car seat canopy, and a nursing cover to sew.  Let me take a moment to complain about my pregnancy aches and pains--actually, I think I won't just yet--I think that might make it worse.  Let's just say that I'm "feelin' it." 

I made this dress for Keira using $1/yard cotton lawn fabric I found at WalMart a couple of years ago. I bought 5 yards of it at the time and have not touched it since. I loved working with it and am impressed with the quality, it being from WalMart. I added some muslin lining to the bodice.

I made the dress using a muslin pattern I traced from a friend's daughter's Cherokee Target dress:

I can't tell you how much easier I find it to make a muslin from an existing dress rather than follow a commercial pattern.

Here's the dress I made for Kalei:

The fabric is leftover from a Liberty for Target (Spring 2010) scarf I got for $3 something.  So, two girls dresses for $3 something.  I always try to gloat about cheap fabric finds, but, really, fabric is fabric, whether it's expensive or cheap, the real value is the effort you put into the project, right?
To make Kalei's dress, I made a muslin from this Target Cherokee brand girls dress:

Target also has a nice chambray version of this dress. I am always impressed with at least a couple of Cherokee or Osh Kosh brand dresses whenever I go to Target. When Kalei wore this Target dress, a couple of people at church thought I had sewn it.  So much of kids (and adult) clothing these days seems to display "handmade" characteristics, but you can't copy Mama's loving artistry, no matter how sloppy it is.

After 2+ years, I finally changed my blog layout and banner. Just a matter of laziness.