Lil Blue Boo and Dharma Trading Design Challenge!

I have been anxiously awaiting this post - there will actually be three posts eventually, but only one for now. Anyways, I'm really excited about the Lil Blue Boo and Dharma Trading Design Challenge. I have talked about Ashley over at Lil Blue Boo before - she is who designed the awesome Sienna pattern that I used to make Abigail's Northwest t-shirt dress. I made this dress a few weeks ago, but had problems getting my model to cooperate! Go figure - a 15-month-old not wanting to pose for pictures?!

On with my first entry! This dress was made using Ashley's Tie-back/Halter pattern.

I wanted to make Abby a dress out of my old lifeguard t-shirts. I lifeguarded forever, then taught swimming lessons and managed two pools for a lot of years (only one pool at a time, don't worry!). I thought it would be perfect for the summer - since we plan on spending a lot of time at the pool this summer. But, I couldn't find any old t-shirts that said "LIFEGUARD" on them. I had one that said "GUARD" across the front, but that was it! Bummer. I decided to try embellishing with freezer paper stenciling and it was surprisingly easy! You just have to cut the designs out of the freezer paper, iron it on and then use fabric paint and voila! when you peel off the paper, you have your design (I hadn't realized freezer paper would iron onto fabric). The most difficult part of the entire dress was cutting the word "LIFEGUARD" out of the freezer paper.

I'm really happy, overall, with how this dress turned out. Abigail's photo shoot didn't exactly go as planned, I would have loved a little sun and warm weather to set the tone, but no such luck. We have snow instead, and we're supposed to get more tonight/tomorrow. Fun.

She looks so innocent...

 

Smiles! At last!!

The back

I love that this pattern has options for the loops and tie back, instead of just being a halter. It's a lot better for little ones.

LIFEGUARD

(she'll hate me for this picture one day!)

My beautiful girl!

 

Sitting at her new table from Great Grandma and Grandpa Tyser

This is what you get when you ask her to say "cheese"

~ I love it! ~