The First Dress I Ever Made and the Girl Who Refused to Wear It

I have always enjoyed dabbling in arts and crafts and doing things "homemade".  (Don't you love playing with language and making adjectives and nouns verbs?)  Once I became a mother my desire to create homemade food, games, activities, decorations, parties, clothes, toys... basically everything, has jumped into hyperdrive.  Funny how that this unrelenting need has occurred at a period of my life where I have less time than ever before.  This desire has driven me to the blogs and a whole new world of inspiration.  This blog world is a love/hate relationship.  Again, less free time in my life than ever before and yet I crave spending hours online looking at what others have created and trying it for myself.  That's just the time to puruse and add projects to my list, a list that grows exponentially while the actually doing and crossing off the list happens at a rate that imitates the growth of coral.

Despite all of this, I decided that to prove my worthiness as a mother I needed to make my daughter (who turned 2 the week after Easter) an Easter dress this year. I found this tutorial at KoJo Designs and thought that I might actually be able to pull this off.  My broad sewing knowledge involves: a basic straight line.  Yep, that's it.  And really you can translate "straight" to mean "pretty wobbly, but basically going in the right direction".  Still, my need to create handmade goodness for my daughter gave me the confidence to look past my lack of skill and take on this dress.  

For a week, I poured my heart into this thing.  A couple of nights staying up until the wee hours of the morning to finish this project after the babies were in bed.  Bless my mom's heart, she burned the midnight oil with me trying to help me figure this out and manage a very cranky 5 month old at the same time.  Gotta love a woman who supports my whims, however ridiculous.  (Don't I have a great mom as a role model?  Lucky me!)

Finally, the dress was complete.  Suprisingly, if you don't look too close, it doesn't look half-bad.  Not perfect, but not horrendous.  Not "The Christmas Story-bunny-outfit-gift" embarrasing.  Someone squinting might even say it was cute. 

Triumph!!!  Perhaps all of my efforts have been redeemed! Perhaps my standing in motherhood is saved!  If I wasn't so tired I would almost be glowing with pride.  If I'm this excited... I can't wait to see my daughter's reaction!  

Imagine my suprise when I tried to put it on her and she screamed bloody-murder and ripped the thing off her body. 

I am not exxaggerating. 

Seriously screamed as though I was trying to kill her. 

I quickly checked for pins. 

No. 

It's made out of a t-shirt it can't be scratchy. 

I tried again. 

She screamed again. 

She pulled and tugged and put up her hands and arms in some kind of karate defense move. I decided it was because I hadn't had enough sleep. 

She's almost 2, she's kind of like Kansas weather: wait 5 minutes and it will change. 

I tried to stay positive.

Easter morning arrived.  I was exhausted.  I was hopeful.  I was shot down.  She wanted nothing to do with my handmade creation.  Two years of her life and the child had never ripped off a single piece of clothing in her life, unitl now.  Until my handmade creation touched her skin and all of sudden it was like the fabric was burning her skin.  I laid in a puddle on the bed and cried. Alot.  We went to visit family and she wore pants.  I sulked with my wounded pride and my plummeting score in mommyhood.  

This is her "Easter outfit".

It turns out that moment began a 2 month period where she refused to wear all dresses, but it still stings that it was my handmade dress that started it all.  Finally in June she was willing to don the "shirt".   

The shades really make the outfit, don't you think?

 

We still couldn't call them dresses.  I will never make anything for her again.  I have learned my lesson!  Well... except for Halloween costumes... and maybe a decorated T-shirt or two...

ok, maybe I didn't learn much after all.