Completed Bunting Gown

I LOVE making baby day gowns for coming home after hospital.  But sometimes what you have envisioned doesn't always come out the way you want it to.  I'm sharing my process of elimination to come to the perfect day gown.  My new grand daughters room colors are pink and gray elephants, if you haven't noticed by now.... But I wanted to do something a little different.

 Looking through my fabric stash, I found this adorable pink/salmon and gray/black floral fabric.  (Henry Glass Fabric, Sweet Harmony).... I started with a white long sleeve baby gown.  I cut the sleeves and serged them, (wish I had a better serger to make them ruffled),  then cut off the lower half of the gown. (Don't worry, I will recycle them too.) I have chiffon rosettes on a spool.  I cut each one individually and trimmed the netting around the rosette.  Next I pinned them to the top and used a wide zig zag to attach.  There were some gaps around the neck so I took smaller rosettes and glued them on which made the neckline fuller.

 

I normally just put a gather skirt to the upper half, but this time, I wanted to make it with cute pleats.  These are 1.5" wide.  I basted them separately and then stitched them together to the top and last I serged that together, to give it a neat and clean look. It needed something else so I added a small bow.  I didn't want to interfere with the rosettes.  As you can tell the bow was too small, and when I tried a larger one, it just over powered it.  I put a 3" hem so it can be taken out if needs to be longer. 

One I finished that, I still needed to turn it into a bunting gown.  Since I didn't leave an opening for the ribbons, (which I normally do), I opened the seam a little under the back side of the dress in the hemmed area.  Using 3/8" elastic, I threaded it through the hem, overlapping the ends and zig zagging the elastic.  The great thing about this is the fact that you can always remove the elastic, just by opening the area which you hand stitched close and cut the elastic and pull it out.  Then just put a couple stitches (by hand), to keep from ripping the seams. 

Again, the bow is just lost.  So I started brainstorming,  what could I do to make it work and look better?  Then I was struck by a lightening bolt (jk)! Actually I fell down and pulled my glut and hamstring, not to mention sprain my wrist and bruised my arm. Praise the Lord they're weren't any broken bones from that ...  Anyway, back to the subject at hand.  For the days I spent recouping, it dawned on me a gray satin sash would be perfect!  Once I was able to drive again, I headed out in search for the perfect gray color.... NOW it looks complete and perfect.... Next will be the headband to go with the gown.... I'm just waiting on my supplies for that. 

Hope this will inspire you to give it a try.  Just be careful not to fall in the process.