Blocking Magic

Addy's christening dress, cap and booties are done, done and done. The blanket is still a work in progress, but hey, I still have 36 hours to get it done. No worries!

It still amazes me what a difference blocking makes. The 'before' dress looks ok. But in the 'after' photo, the stitches are all aligned, everything looks neater - and best of all, the dress "grew" 2 inches. Addy is 26" from the top of her head to her feet. The dress is 22" after blocking. I'm hoping her head and neck are 6-7" of her length, which would make this dress exactly the right size.

I used a larger hook for the cap, thinking I could keep the same stitch count and the bigger stitches would make it fit Addy's 6-month old noggin. The largest pattern in the book was for a 3-6 month old. Since Addy is big for her age (90th percentile!) I wanted to make sure it would fit. And now, of course, I'm worried that it will be too big. (Sorry for the crummy picture. I took it with my cell phone so I could send it to Rachel. Forgot to take a good one before I unpinned it.)

The booties still need the silk trim on top, but I'll do that once we reach Colorado. It's really hard to take a good photo of white silk, but if you look closely at the dress edge you can see the Trebizond silk I used for the trim. The pattern called for #8 perle cotton but I wanted something that better matched the silk in the dress. Vickie suggested Weavers Needle and Frame in Newbury Park, where I found Trebizond silk. I'd never heard it before, but man oh man, it is really nice stuff. Definitely going to use it for more projects.

I loved making this dress but I'm glad it's done. Cross your fingers that it fits Miss Addison!