Sadie's Baptism Dress

It is common practice in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to baptize children at age  eight as they are thought to be accountable for their actions at this age.  I try to honor this special occasion with a new dress for my grand daughters.  Grand daughter number three was baptized last Saturday in Arizona  which is also where I finished up the final touches on her dress a couple of days earlier.

The dresses include some English smocking, are mostly white, and are selected from my collection of Australian Smocking and Embroidery magazines.  Sadie chose this dress from Issue 90.  I had to make a few adaptations as my pleater will only pleat 16 rows at a time and the pattern called for 24 rows.

I used satin for this dress as was shown in the magazine.  I will never use satin again.  It was so hard to roll it through the pleater and I had to back smock the entire piece to hold the pleats in place.  I also had to top stitch the scallop overlay on the hem to keep the scallops, well, scallops.

The blue satin and matching piping was buttery and soft in feel but also hard to sew. Sadie really liked touching that blue fabric.

I was a bit disappointed in my final product, but when I took it to Sadie it fit perfectly and she made the dress.  All that smocking was done as I listened to General Conference.

Sadie loved it!  And I love Sadie!!