Thursday, February 6, 2014

8-Year Old Baptism Dress

Our daughter turns 8 at the end of the month, and I wanted her to have something other than the traditional jump suit to be baptized in.  I was baptized in the same dress as my mom and some of her sisters, as well as my own sister, but my mom doesn't think she'll be able to find the dress anymore at my grandma's house.  So I thought I could recreate the dress, but decided not to when I saw a picture of it.  This is my sister on her baptism day in the dress:


This is me on my baptism day in the pink dress.  These days, the trend is to get baptized in the jump suit, then get a fancy white dress for the little girl to wear to church. Honestly, the fad kind of bugs me because why would you even consider putting an 8-year old girl in a fancy white dress??  It's not like she's a bride on her wedding day, and it's just going to get dirty.  I hate following the crowd, so it's really hard for me to do this.  I did ask our daughter if she would like me to make her a pretty white dress to be baptized in and then get her a new, regular dress (not white) for church.  She said she wanted the fancy white dress.


So, I searched around on Pinterest and found a white dress bodice on Pink Princess that I liked.  I didn't like how it looks busty here, so I just made a regular width waistband rather than a high one.  Although, if I make another, I see some alterations I'd like to implement.


I used Liz Clark's pattern and came up with this:



I think it's super cute, but it would be so fun to wear to church, too! 

So, I got some more fabric and took a dress I liked and reverse engineered it:



I came up with this this morning, but it is so plain that I wonder if we may as well use the jump suits!



For the baptism, I dressed it up a bit with a few flowers. I think it looked just lovely; I also made a clip for her hair with 2 more clips for her little sisters so they could match.