Tiny Girl, Tiny Dress

clockwise: pistachio nut cake with pink cream cheese frosting;
posing with the pretty decorative tissue-paper pom-poms we hung from the ceiling for the party; gift table; plastic babies from the "my water broke" game where babies are frozen in ice cubes
then added to each guest's beverage; "prank you" fake Crib Dribbler box, which all of us except the gift-giver mistakenly assumed was a real product; make a baby from play-dough game; decorated onesies with fabric markers.
This past weekend, my friends and I held a surprise baby shower for our bestie, Allison. I've been dreaming of adorable little baby clothes ever since I found out she was pregnant, and once she announced it would be a girl, my brain almost exploded just thinking about all of the adorable possibilities. I'm sure some of you can relate. I mean, have you looked at the baby clothes in Target or any other department store? They're so tiny! and inexpensive (compared to adult clothes), and did I meantion they're ridiculously cute?
I began scouring the internet for baby clothes sewing patterns. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places, but a lot of what I found was for toddlers, which will be great later, but I needed little tiny baby things!
I finally settled upon the adorable Little Geranium dress from made-by-rae. I saw Sonja had whipped up a few and was dying to give it a try. Then I found out the 0-3 mo. version of the pattern was available for FREE. Sold.

I stitched it up in a leopard print ponte de roma & a coral pink ponte fino knit, both from Fabric.com. No fancy techniques here, just used a knit/ball-point needle made for medium-weight fabrics. This was my first time sewing with ponte knit, ever, and it was super easy. It's great because it doesn't really fray (left the seams unfinished!) and has a nice drape, but isn't too lightweight or overly stretchy. I suppose you could say it's somewhat stable?

One thing it's not good for: multiple layers/seams overlapping with your intended buttonhole placement. What do I mean? I mangled 2 buttonholes trying to stitch them for the back closure because my janky buttonhole foot couldn't maneuver around any of the slightly bulky seams. You can see my stray, pinched-looking, abandoned buttonhole attempts if you look closely (or even not so closely). I was forced to move on after only successfully creating 2 buttonholes in the center back.

Overall, this was a fun, fast, and easy dress to whip up. Maybe snaps could solve the buttonhole issue I encountered? I do have some more brightly colored ponte I'm considering using to make another one of these -- though I could obviously just make it in regular woven fabric, too. I highly recommend this dress pattern; the finished product makes a great baby shower gift. :)