Girl Things

My daughter follows several blogs that feature stylish sewing and homemaking, one of her favorites being Posie Gets Cozy. Lately Alicia Paulson (the power behind all the daily creativity displayed on the site) has been concocting baby girl and little girl dresses, as she and her husband make ready to adopt. Her styling and execution are well above the level I could ever aspire to, but with my daughter's robust encouragement I have been studying the work with a frank eye to imitation. Alicia Paulson is scrupulous about crediting her pattern sources, her fabric and notion sources, even her subliminal inspirations. We in our turn have been following in the paths she has blazed, and have consequently started to discover pattern purveyors from across the wide globe that we never knew existed.


Yesterday after visiting Mabel Watson Payne and consulting at length about sewing projects that might appeal to her, I ordered five children's patterns in French from an outfit called Citronelle with its headquarters in Versailles.






Suzanne, the design immediately above, is the one we intend to try first. The pattern we ordered covers sizes 2 through 8, but we're going to see if we can size it down a little bit below a 2, so that Mabel Watson Payne can get the good of it as soon as possible. And that is the only one so far for which we have actually ordered fabric – Windham Fabric's Blue Sequin Dot (as seen below) from the line called storybook viii – discovered at purlsoho.com, our reliable favorite online fabric vendor (supplier of fabrics for the Baby Dwelling where Mabel Watson Payne now lives, and what could be a finer recommendation than that?)


When all materials arrive and construction starts, every step will be exhaustively reported here, rest assured.