A Dress for Maliah!

As I’ve mentioned on this site a bunch of times, Anika’s very best friend in all the world is Maliah. Maliah’s mom happens to be one of my very best friends in all the world too, so it works out well!

For Maliah’s birthday this year, we made her a treasure map of sorts. Basically we made her a giant “Lil Blue Boo Sienna Dress” menu – and let her choose exactly what she wanted her dress to look like. I printed out pictures I found online of different completed Boo dresses and gave her options for things like sleeve lengths, colour palettes, designs, legging styles, etc.

So she took her menu home and apparently created about ten different dresses….but she finally decided on one!

As you can tell, she wanted a Valentines colour scheme, with flowers and butterflies, short sleeves, and a hood. Awesome.

I struggled a little big with what colour to put on the white band. I knew I wanted to include some black in there, because the leggings are black, but I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted in a fabric.

My solution? I used some sections of white t-shirt, grabbed a black fabric marker and started doodling!

I actually love the result – I think it came out really really well.

I made a size 5 for Maliah, who tends to run a bit taller than the average 5-year-old. But I am finding (is it just me?) that a lot of Ashley’s patterns seem to run a bit big – so the 5 is actually a little big on Maliah. I definitely need to size down for Anika, but I actually love that. So often kids clothes are not made with enough room in them – I’d SO much rather have them like this!

Adding the hood to the dress (from Ashley’s hoodie pattern) was easy.

I think in retrospect I’d probably choose to shape the body of the dress a bit more – maybe a-line it a bit – and change the proportion of the white band to the ruffle a little (I think the band might be a little wide). But it really looks adorable on her (must. get. pictures. of. models.), and she loves it – so that’s the important thing!

Maliah wore her dress on Valentines day and looked positively lovely in it. I was thrilled to be able to make her something that she really likes so much!

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Now – have I’ve talked a fair bit lately about Lil Blue Boo patterns and raved about how much I like them and how great I think they are. MONDAY Ashley is holding a one day pattern sale in support of a friend of hers who recently lost her one year old to a form of cancer – you can read more about that story here – http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/16/baby-who-fought-cancer-with-mom-dies/. It is of course nothing short of heartbreaking to lose a child – and Ashley is donating 100% of the proceeds from this to the Fitzgerald Cancer Fund to help the family with medical bills, and to raise awareness about neuroblastoma.

It’s a great way to help a family out who needs it and to pick up an awesome sewing pattern! Ashley’s PDF pattern store is here – http://shop.lilblueboo.com/category/pdf-sewing-patterns.

Check it out!