My DIY'd Little Lamb Easter Baby Dress Set & Teether

What could be sweeter for Easter for a baby girl than a little lamb outfit?  I thought it would be an ideal change from the usual bunnies & flowers and better suited to the meaning of the holiday.

 

I couldn't find a pattern that had all the features I wanted: puff sleeves, full skirt, pullover neckband, so I drafted up my own. 

 

 

Since the weather here usually is chilly at Easter, I also made a coordinating pair of leggings with the Ottobre Design Lola pants pattern:

 

 

I used that pant pattern it just a month ago with this outfit:

 

 

The fabric I used this time was a soft rib knit velour, that is cuddly, but light in weight:

 

I also used it for the neckband on the dress and the color was a perfect match:

 

I also found some decorative lace elastic in my stash so I added that as an extra detail on the sleeves:

 

I even made a matching silicone teether toy (and one to send as a gift for my baby nephew too):

 

 

I'll be honest though, I didn't think this new Easter outfit would be done in time.  I literally just finished it and it was 50/50 until the last stitch that I was going to have to scrap the dress and scramble to do something else.  The fabric was super cute, and I'd bought it months ago eagerly waiting to use it for Easter, but it just didn't seem to want to cooperate.  Literally everything seemed to go wrong. 

 

 

There were several times when the thread randomly bunched up during basic stitching.  Total bird nests.  The fabric curled quite a bit when cut and shifted around a lot when sewing too, even when well pinned and using a walking foot.  Even with fresh bobbin, re-threading & fresh needle it was fiddly, which was odd since euro knits usually sew like a dream.  My seam ripper got a work out!

 

My gathering technique with cord for the skirt portion normally works well too - where you baste a wide zig-zag around some thin cord to easily pull the ends & gather.  This time the cord kept jumping as I stitched so it threaded through the cord in a number of spots.  That meant I couldn't pull it without snipping those stitches.  It should look like this, captured between them:

 

And I'm not going to totally blame the fabric, because I may have made the sleeves a little tight with the elastic as well. 

 

 

When I first stretched the elastic to gather the sleeves it didn't seem to cinch up enough and looked too loose despite it being several inches shorter than the sleeve width.  I tried steaming it to shrink up a little, but it did nothing.  So I unpicked an entire sleeve and stretched the elastic a bit more as I sewed, which looks better, but may now be a bit too snug on her chubby arms.  

 

I'm going to try it on her today & if it is I may do a chop shop on the sleeves to remove that section and re-hem them (thank God I made them a little longer than I usually do so there's a little extra length there!).  I also ran out of my favorite fusible tape, which makes hemming on knits that curl MUCH easier, so there was more messing around to finish that too.

 

I was really pleased with how quick the teether toys came together though.  I'd bought the beads from different places, but I feel like they paired together really well:

 

I'd originally planned to make them circular but didn't like how they looked as I threaded them, so I did clip versions instead and these cute angel wing heart teethers I had in my bead stash were perfect for the tail ends:

 

When all is said & done, the outfit did turn out as I'd imagined despite the hurdles.  I'm going to try my pattern on another fabric and if it works out there, I'll make it into a free PDF & tutorial.

 

 

Happy Easter!