Baptismal Gown

Little E helps Mommy and Nana with sewing. Not really but he looked so darn cute I had to start off this post with this picture!


I had the wonderful idea that I would sew a baptismal gown for little E for his baptism on Sunday. After looking at the gown my mother sewed for my brother I figured that I could sew one just the same with little or no trouble (and with some coaching from her).


The material we used for the gown was given to my mom by my great-grandmother for her to make my baptismal gown. We used the same pattern that my mom used to make my brother's baptismal gown. His baptismal gown had a little blue teddy bear embroidered on it. My son's god-parents are my sister and brother-in-law and they have a West Highland White Terrier named Wilkie (who is like one of the family). Evan's gown has a little westie on it that my mom embroidered.


I started this project very optimistically. However, life doesn't always go according to plan. I would say that it is mostly due to the fact that I left the sewing of the gown till the week before the baptism. This was mistake #1. No problem for my mom - but I needed to allow room for error. And there were three in the first 30 minutes of sewing.

First thing I did was to pin the yoke to the front of the skirt the wrong way. I had the front of the yoke pinned to the inside of the gown. This had taken 20 minutes of gathering, measuring, careful pinning and matching up which had to be undone. This could have been worse. I could have actually sewed it wrong.


Mistake number two came after I sucessfully sewed the seam after re-pinning it. It was then that my mom and I looked at it and discovered that we hadn't put the lace on. Every thing had to be torn out, gathering stiches put back in, gathers re-done, and measured over again. After an hour of sewing we were back at square one.

I sewed the lace on the yoke and then my mom redid the front seam yet again. This was when little E woke up from his nap and I had to go feed him. At this point, I realized that it could take hours to sew the dress at my speed so I just let my mom have at it.



She is saving a few jobs for me to do on the gown. I will be sewing the side seams, hemming it and adding the final lace trim. I think this still counts as me "sewing" his dress.