Cutest Dress Ever

Dress and Pinafore made from Butterick B4054. Dress is view A; Pinafore is view H but without the ruffles (I didn't have enough matching fabric for the ruffles). Both are size 1 (12 months) and loosely fit my 13-month old daughter.

The dress was made with a Kona cotton solid (100% cotton) from JoAnn. The pattern was easy to follow and went pretty quickly (I was able to sew it about 2-3 hours a day over 5 days). There were two difficult parts: getting the bias tape onto the collar because there was a lot of bulk from the collar pieces and the bias tape was pretty small AND sewing the sleeves onto the dress because the armholes were so small they wouldn't fit around the arm of my machine so I had to be very careful not to sew them closed. The dress fits loosely and the skirt is fairly long, which I like but could be difficult if she was crawling.

The pinafore was made from a white remnant, most likely 100% cotton. Easy to make and follow the pattern (it was the first time I had ever done gathers and it explained it well). It sat for a little while because there was hand sewing involved on the inside but once I sat down to do it, the hand sewing went quickly.

Fleece Jacket

This jacket is made using McCall's M5538, view C, size small. It is made with charcoal grey fleece (anti-pill). Overall the pattern was fairly easy to read and follow but there were some parts where I didn't understand what they were saying so I had to just wing it:

First, the zipper was a nightmare. I think my biggest trouble came because it was plastic so when the instructions explained how to shorten the zipper, it didn't work on the plastic teeth. I ended up just hiding it in the collar; it was only a few inches.

Second, I don't feel like there were ever instructions on what to do about sewing down the bottom of the collar so when I was finished with the jacket, I just ran my machine across the back collar, hiding the stitches in the seam between the back and collar.

Finally, I omitted the arm pocket. I sewed it like normal but without the pocket.

One note about the pattern overall is that the pockets are located at the side seams, which makes makes it more awkward because it feels a little far back from where you would naturally expect it to be (but the pocket location made it easier to sew than if they were on the front section).