Worth it!

Some days, when I'm working on projects, it seems like nothing goes right.  Today was one of those days.  It started off to be a good, productive day.  Anthony and I were done with his homeschooling by 11, and he and the girls went outside to play - the weather was positively gorgeous!  So I had some quiet inside time, with all the windows open, to work on sewing.  I already had completed a dress that was to be a birthday gift that a friend of mine had ordered for her sweet to-be-5-year old daughter.  

I had also finished a scrappy flower matching hair barrette, which was a gift from me.  (Don't actually have a picture of that.)  Today I needed to complete the matching doll dress her mom ordered, and I wanted to make a scrappy flower pony tail for the doll, to match the dress, as a gift from me as well.

Right from the start, things just didn't go my way.  I wasn't using a pattern - since I didn't actually use a pattern for the little girl's dress - and all I knew of the doll was that it was an 18" doll - and I sort of assumed, since I knew the girl HAD an American Doll, that the dress was FOR the American Doll.  Oops.  So I had the side seams sewn and serged, when I vaguely remembered something about her mom trying to get some other type of doll for her daughter...and thought it might be a good idea if I could actually SEE the doll to make sure the dress I was making would actually FIT the doll before I went any further.  GOOD THING.  

She brought the doll over - which I immediately swooned over and fell head over heels in love with, by the way - and I was right...the dress didn't fit.  Since the doll was to be a gift, it was no problem to leave the doll with me...which she did...and I went to work.  First, I realized that besides being too tight, the dress was way too long...so initially, I tried to just shorten the existing dress and make it work.  Which would  have worked, had I not cut the arm holes unevenly.  Oops.  So I cut some more, and it was a little shorter than I wanted, but I thought I could still make it work.  So I went to do the rolled hem edge on the bottom.  Except my serger was doing something funky to the fabric and pretty much ruining it.  I tried adjusting tensions, etc., to no avail.  Well, shoot.  I adjusted some more, practiced on some scraps, again to no avail...and then it finally dawned on me.  While I had unthreaded the left needle - I had never actually removed it.  DUH.  So it was making an unnecessary and damaging row of holes in the fabric.  SIGH.  Scrap that dress altogether and just start over.

So I started over.  This time it went much better...and I took notes on my computer, just in case this mom (or anyone else) ever asks me again to make a dress for a Natural Buddies doll (and this ended up being a 16" doll, not an 18" one), so I never have to figure this out again!  

I finally got the dress done, and went to reach for a safety pin so I could pull the ribbon through the strap tubes - only to knock over a little basket that holds my india ink and a few little jars of colored india-style dip-pen ink.  That don't have tight-fitting lids.  They fell to the floor.  The turquoise opened...you see where this is going, right?  (THANK GOD the doll, the dresses, and the hair flowers were NO WHERE NEARBY when this happened!)  Turquoise is one of my favorite colors - but it was EVERYWHERE.  It took me forever to clean it all up - and even longer to scrub and slough my hands (in fact, I still have it under and around my fingernails).

I finally got the straps put on, got the dress on the doll, got her sweater put back on (which amazingly, matched her dress perfectly!), and got her hair pony made.  And once I saw how completely beautiful she looked, and how precious she was next to her soon-to-be mommy's dress...the day of disasters was ALL WORTH IT!  I only wish I could be there tomorrow morning to see her face light up when she gets to open her gifts!!!  (I'm certain her mommy will take LOTS of photos and I will get to experience it secondhand!)