sweet blessings

(i've been meaning to post this forever!)

so almost a year ago one of my oldest (as in we've known each other since we were born) friends emailed asking if i would make her daughter a blessing dress out of her own wedding dress. yep you read it right. she wanted me to use her wedding dress. i was actually really excited about this. think of how meaningful the dress would be. the blessing dress would be the first formal gown she would own. it would be something to keep forever. and to have it created out of the dress your mother was married in would make it even more meaningful. i love the idea of making a special garment even more meaningful. the blessing gown i made for macy was styled after my wedding gown but i made it out of silk i had purchased when i worked at a fabric store in high school. i bought it hoping someday i would have a girl to make a blessing dress for and i loved that i got to use it for my first baby. (sorry no picture of it! what was i thinking back then?)

so i agreed that i would love to make the dress for my friend. we met up for lunch one day and i got the dress. once i had the wedding dress in my possession i didn't know if i really had the guts to cut it up. it was gorgeous. it was satin. it was her wedding dress! what if i were to mess up? there's no forgiveness when it's a garment of that nature. so truly, the hardest part of making the dress was working up the nerve to cut into her beautiful gown. after that, it was so fun to try to follow the design my friend had requested and add a little bit of the original gown to the dress. so here's the end result. i used only fabric from the wedding dress minus the tie(it's a ribbon) if you look closely, the band near the bottom with designs on it is the same as a band on the skirt and the bodice of the original dress. the narrow bands of ribbon sewn on the skirt are the tie from the corset back of the original dress. i love how it turned out because it already had an antique feel to it because of the fabric having been used before. i loved working with the fabric because it was bridal satin which is way nicer than the satin you can just buy at joanns. making this dress reminded me of one i also made for my neice. it was one of my favorite styles because it wasn't the traditional blessing gown style. i don't know how, but i did princess seams down the front. then i embroidered flowers on it with ribbon(i don't know how to do ribbon embroidery) but i thought it was sweet and stylish for a cute little baby. oh i hope i have a girl next so i can make another sweet gown.