The dress.

Threw up again last night. It was a bummer because I had a REALLY good day. Actually did some real cleaning and felt so good about how the day was going. Started feeling slightly sick around dinner. Ate some stuff. Felt better. Had cookies and popcorn and other junk. Regretted it, but what do you do? Around 9 I felt bad again and within 20 minutes it got so bad that I was hi-tailing it to the bathroom. I guess I didn't need to feel guilty about the junk food. That must be what it's like to be bulimic. Don't worry...not tempted.

The part that gets me down the most is that Blair made me promise that I wouldn't try to start painting Cami's room (the one that they will both share soon) until I had been feeling at least ALMOST normal for at least a week. And I was up to day three, and then BOOM. Gotta start back at one.

I have this schedule, you see. I'm a bit of a planner. I like having a timetable. So, I made one for all the changes that have to happen before baby arrives in September. I started backward.

By Sept 1, I want EVERYTHING done. 

So that means in August, the crib has to be back in the baby room. 

In July, I'll paint the baby room and gather and clean and dust all the necessary things for that. 

In June, I want to have Noah switch from crib to toddler bed. 

In May I want to purchase Cami's new twin bed and I want their room to be done (I'm making them matching bedspreads, etc and all will be Dr. Suess themed--SO excited). 

In April, I want to move Noah's crib into Cami's room. I want to make this change first before trying to switch to the toddler bed, and have him used to being in with Cami for a good month before that happens. 

Which means THIS month (March) is the month I am supposed to paint Cami's room. 

And we're halfway through the month. And I'm still throwing up. So I have like one more week before I need to be feeling 100% (if not...85-90) in order to stick to schedule. Which I realize has plenty of wiggle room, but I'm just frustrated, okay? :)

And I'm sure you are wondering why any of that has to do with "The Dress" (title of the post). It doesn't. But I'm getting to that. BEFORE I was going to start working on the bedspreads, I wanted to sew Cami her Easter Dress. SOOOO, without further ado, here it is:

I have to tell you. This dress REALLLLLLY stretched my abilities to the brink. And if you are a seamstress of any kind and looked closely, you'd see all the issues I had with it. Some seams didn't match up. The whole bodice ended up too big, and I had a make a fix on the back that totally ruined how beautiful the lining of the bodice looked on the inside. I didn't have any idea how to do a slipstitch, so when I attched the lining of the midriff to the seam of the midriff/skirt, I kinda just made up a stitch, and it looks pretty ridiculous (but does the job, mind you, and is on the inside, so whatever...) The shoulder straps aren't evenly gathered. The box pleats aren't all exactly the same width or exactly the same distance apart. I was too lazy to handstitch the hem like the pattern told me to, so I machined it, and you can see it, but I don't really care. :)

And the only reason I'm telling you all those things is so that you know that I know the issues with it. After all of that, though, I'm REALLY proud of myself, and happy that I took the plunge and did it. Didn't save money. Didn't save time. But I did something with my hands that I can be proud of, and that was worth the effort. Oh, and Cami loves it and can't wait until Easter. :)

Just so you know, I fell in love with this dress from Children's Place, but couldn't get on the vintage/80s floral bandwagon that they wanted me to get on to buy it, so that was the inspiration. Here it is:

So, I looked for patterns but couldn't really find anything that would work and that I wouldn't have to be a professional seamstress to adjust to be like the CP one, so I decided to give up and just buy a dress, any old dress, and move on with my life. So I went to BBRUS and picked one. Cami was very vocal about how much she did not like it. She never does that, but she would not let up. So I walked out empty handed, and headed to Joanns to buy the fabric for the bedspreads aforementioned.

The SECOND I walked in the door, they had this handmade dress on a manican with a pattern sitting next to it. It wasn't exactly like the CP one, but it had a gathered bodice and a gathered skirt with a waistband in between, and I knew I could turn the gathers into pleats (although I had no idea how hard the box pleats would be...)

So then I let Cami pick out some fabric for it. She picked a few things that I vetoed, but then she saw the light and dark pink and blue and gray flowers and loved it. And I did, too.

So yah. This was like the second real pattern I'd ever followed, and there was a lot of unpicking and pinning and re pinning and fretting over it, but there ya have it. It was worth it.

So here's to not feeling sick for a whole week so I can keep moving forward.