Monday, November 9, 2015

Baby Blessing Dress Using Mommy's Wedding Dress


My daughter's wedding dress was a classic: lace with short capped sleeves.  Since she was getting married in October, she wanted the dress to look more like fall. So, we paid to have the dress altered and had the cap sleeves removed from the dress and replaced them with lace, elbow-length sleeves (as seen in the below photo). I asked that the original sleeves be saved and given to us, just in case I might ever need to use them. Those original cap sleeves were my inspiration for this baby blessing/christening dress.


To make this blessing dress, I took those original lace sleeves and cut them down to make the sleeves for this baby blessing/christening dress.  In an ideal world, I would have had more of the lace to use, but I can't say I didn't try. I even went to the dress shop where I purchased the wedding dress to see if I could purchase some. Sadly, the store informed me that it could take up to three months to get orders from this company and suggested that I cut into the train of my daughter's wedding dress, which I did not dare do.  So instead, I cut the leftover lace into pieces as shown below and then pinned those pieces onto the bodice in a random pattern. I tried an organized pattern but it looked awful! Then, I sewed all those little pieces in place - a very time consuming labor of love.



The pattern I used was the same one I used to make my daughter's blessing dress over 30 years ago (photos of that original dress can be seen here). 

I altered Vogue pattern #2878 slightly by adding pleats to the skirt instead of ruffles and shortened the dress by about 18 inches.  My daughter felt the original dress was ridiculously long. 


After finishing this dress, it needed a slip to add some volume to the skirt. But I wasn't in the mood to make the slip that came with the pattern because it was almost like making another dress.  Instead, I made a skirt and then sewed it to the bodice of the dress.  Of course I didn't think of this step until the dress was completely finished, so I ended up hand sewing it into place.  




Just look at those old looking hands, those are my hands holding this precious baby on her blessing day. Didn't the dress turn out so lovely?





So grateful that my husband and I had a lot of SkyMiles so we could be there when our newest granddaugter was blessed by her dad at church - it was such a special day!  xoxo Grandma

Linked to:  Project Run and Play You might also like theses blessing/christening dresses:
Here
Heirloom Dress

3 comments:

ssjmommy said...

What a wonderful idea! I love it!

Leslie W said...

I just saw your post - your dress is fabulous. And your hands look like mine; ones that serve and share a lot of love. I was looking for ideas for blessing gowns for a couple of friends of mine from my ward/church when I came across your post.

Just today we took their wedding dresses apart and started an angel baby project with them. We are going to make a blessing gown for each of the gals to keep as an heirloom/momento that their grandchildren can be blessed in. All of the rest of the wedding dresses will be used to make tiny little preemie gowns for babies that do not make it.

You are a good grandma!

Unknown said...

You did an awesome job grandma an your hands look great.