Molly's Birthday Dress

My niece  Molly will be one year old this month!  I made her a birthday dress & coat.

 I used a Simplicity re-issue 2629 from 1948. I made the little dress in the upper right corner of the pattern envelope and the pink  jacket  pictured under that to go over it. 

  

I followed the pattern  except I cut the dress much shorter. Molly is crawling a lot and I didn't want the dress to be so long that it caught up under her knees and could hinder her crawling . Babies get very annoyed by that! I added pin tucks by the bottom hem.  I also added a lining to the inside of the coat .  The lining makes it much more comfortable to wear and much easier to get on and a wiggly baby! :)
Here she is in the dress:

I embroidered little bunnies onto the dress & jacket. 

 The instructions for the bunnies are in  Sew Cute Couture. This book is lovely to look  at but I doubt I will ever do any of the smocking in the book.  Seems very   time consuming. I love some of the embroidered embellishments  in the book. It uses buttons and embroidery and they are all adorable.  The simplicity pattern came with a pretty floral design but I  liked the bunnies better. The bunnies are boullion knots with lazy daisies for ears.  I love these bunnies for a baby item, even better as it is near Easter!

Those were the tiniest buttons I have ever sewn onto anything. 

The pintucks were very time consuming as they needed to be just perfect to look right.
I love the tiny lace on the sleeves.  I bought the tiniest lace I could find. 

Here is the little jacket over the dress.

Some of the purple fabric marker is still  visible around the bunnies.
I marked lines on the fabric so the bunnies were evenly spaced  and level. 

The lining was not attached yet. 

The entire lining was  hand sewn in. I didn't want any stitch lines visible on the outside. 

The sleeves are pinned up and ready to be hand sewn in. 

I put a little label in the jacket  & the dress.
It has the year on it so it can be dated in later years. I am going to try to
 put labels in everything I make from now on. 

Inside out front

Inside out back 

Molly was getting sleepy as it was near bedtime.

I was very happy the little coat fit her perfectly! I made the 12 month size and  hoped for the best.

 Molly loved the coat hanger  best of all. 

Sleepy baby. 

When it warms up a bit, I am going to take more pictures of Moly in her dress and then turn them to black & white. If I print them on super glossy paper and rough the up a touch, they will look like 1948 prints ! :) :)