Geranium dress for baby M

Isn't serendipity a wonderful thing? Like when you go to the swimming pool on a 40 degree day and enter the car park just as someone is reversing out of one of the coveted shady parking spots. Or when you walk into Spotlight and immediately see some fabric you adore, then discover it's on clearance at a ridiculously cheap price. Or when your baby has just tumbled out of his highchair and gone clunk on the floor and a knock at the door turns out to be your stepfather the doctor*.

Serendipitously, Rae's geranium dress was released just as I began the search for a simple pattern with a loosely-fitted bodice, flutter sleeves and a gathered skirt (I had considered improvising one using the Oliver + S bubble dress pattern as a starting point, but thought I would probably stuff up the bodice in attempting to get rid of the curved-out shoulder bits). Rae's pattern offers three styles of bodice, the option of flutter sleeves, two styles of skirt - pleated or gathered - and two styles of notched/cutout neckline. I was vacillating over whether to buy the pattern (as opposed to wasting several evenings trying to draft one, then throwing away a metre of good fabric in an attempt to sew up a fatally flawed garment) when I realised that - serendipitously! - my niece was about to turn 1, thus providing the excuse I needed.

So here's my first geranium dress, in size 12-18 months with faux cap sleeves and cutout on the neckline. My attempts to make the cutout more U-shaped failed, but the dress was otherwise very pleasant and easy to put together, and had I not made a few spectacularly stupid mistakes along the way (for example, ironing interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric and not noticing until the bodice was sewn up) it would have been fairly quick, too. 

It was hard to get a photo of M in her dress but this is the best I could do - with a t-shirt underneath and her mum holding her up while she appears to be trying to pull it off (or perhaps she's just feeling the fabric and saying 'I love this voile! Did you get it on clearance at Spotlight, by any chance?'). The size is very roomy on her, but I'm happy with that - nothing worse than a handmade garment that only fits for five minutes. Happy birthday, beautiful baby!

Coming up next (or at least, soonish): R's geranium dress, with flutter sleeves.

*He survived the fall without any apparent ill-effect, but he does have a silly streak a mile long and is prone to putting on ridiculous and highly irritating voices. Or perhaps he just gets that from his dad...