Easy Empire Waist Top Baby Dress & Robot Quilt Block

The most inconsistent poster is back and graduated so I’ve been sewing up a storm. All the things I had on my list to do for 2 years or more.

Here is a little baby dress “Easy Empire Waist Top” I made for a friend a while back for her new baby. I got the pattern from Amy Butler’s Little Stitches for Little Ones. OK I like the book but there are a number of errors and missing diagrams which make the book hard to use. In general this was a frustrating little dress to make as it was my first baby outfit I made. If I was to make this dress again I would not make the sleeves the way the pattern calls for but instead make simple sleeves.

A close up of the little bow in front.

The baby bloomers were the easy thing to make.

The book did not have a view of the back of the dress this was frustrating for me. I decided not to simply sew the elastic inside the dress without a covering over the elastic. Why because the elastic might rub the tender baby skin and cause irritation. I created a tube of fabric that I put the elastic in the sewed the tube to the inside of the baby dress.

A nice coordinated button is always important.

Here is a Robot block I made after seeing this robot quilt. I was pleased with my version but it is still sitting around as you see it below.

Here is a better view of it.

A Helpful List & Catch up post

To help organize my Christmas check list for all the people I am getting gifts for I found the print out at Atypical Type A’s site helpful.

The rest of this post is a catch up post on some of the things I was making earlier this year. Earlier this summer when I was still learning exactly how to paper piece hexagons I made a bunch of yellow hexagon flowers with yellow fabric seen below. This is before I made my paper pieced hexagon wall hanging. I described there a little more information on where I learned how to paper piece.

I fell in love with this cute little owl fabric but I needed to make sure the owls looked right before I cut the fabric. To do this I followed the instructions on how to fussy cut the fabric. I made some of my own templates with the plastic sheets below.

Nothing special but they helped greatly.

Because my family all lives in Arizona and I in Georgia I have been flying frequently and needed a larger purse to transport my laptop. I came across pictures of Amy Butler’s Birdie Sling and bought the pattern.

I used fusible fleece instead of the interfacing described in the pattern this made a more cushy shoulder strap and a sturdier bag in general.

Here is an inside view of one side.

And here is the other sided inside the bag. These pockets are slightly larger. It took about a day and an evening to make the bag if I remember correctly.