Our Growing Family

As our garden has been growing, so has our family.  It has been a long summer, filled with family, gardening, and fun. We've kept busy documenting through photographs, even if the blogging has been slow. We are looking forward to sharing all of this with you as things slow down. 

We have a few things we have been working on over the last few weeks that we are excited to share. One is the tomatoes we have been preparing for salsa, but that is for another post. The project that we'd like to share now has everything to do with the birth of our new son four weeks ago. 

We are all very excited to welcome this sweet little guy to our family!  He is baby number six. With every child that has graced our home we have had a tradition. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As part of our religious faith we have a ceremony to officially give each child a name and a blessing, it is like a christening without the baptism. Baptism is performed later, once the child reaches  the age of accountability, and can choose for themselves whether or not they want to make the commitment. 

Anyway, as part of this process we have provided individual homemade blessing clothing for each of our children. Some have been made by babies grandmothers, and others have been sewed by mom.  Each of the outfits are slightly different, and all are made with lots of love. 

This time I used a new pattern. It required several alterations, as it was very feminine. Here are some pictures of the pattern and the end product. 

Pattern:

End product:

Of the alterations made some are quite obvious, the addition of the vest and bow tie for instance. Some of the other alterations were not quite as noticeable. The removal of the pleats from the bodice front, and the conversion of the sleeve from a short puff sleeve to a long sleeve were the other major alterations from the pattern. 

To accomplish these changes, and avoid damaging the original pattern, I traced the pattern pieces onto tissue paper.  The sleeve required removing a few inches of width and some height from the original pattern piece. 

Tracing the pattern also gave me the opportunity to make it a specific size without having to cut around the extra sizing lines. 

When I finally got to the cutting and sewing I was blessed to have my lovely mother in law here to help and motivate me. She designed the vest. 

Much of the actual sewing goes to her credit, as baby frequently needed my attention and we were in a time crunch. 

It was finally finished at about 2am, as I sewed on the last of the buttons and snaps. Here is how our precious little one looks in the outfit. 

I really enjoy sewing, though I rarely give myself the time to do it. I love being able to provide tangible memories for my children that they will be able to take with them when they leave home and start their own families.