Blessing Gown

My dear friend is having a baby in the beginning of October. This baby is a miracle baby, ten years in the making, so I wanted to make something incredibly special for her baby shower.

Enter the blessing gown. LDS babies are blessed (usually by their fathers) at about six weeks of age, so I got to make a teeny tiny little dressie!

When I started this project they were told they were having a girl...and then, after I'd gotten pretty far into it, the new doctor said, "Um, yeah, those are testicles." Oops. I had a minor panic, like OH NO I CAN'T MAKE A DRESSIE FOR A BOY but then several people assured me that traditionally many babies are still blessed in gowns, male or female. That was a relief!

So here's the picture on the pattern:

And here's the mega-ball of crochet thread that I used (yes, I made this out of thread):

The biggest part was the first part, the skirt. It was worked in a very large rectangle, and took I think about two months on its own (but I was working on other projects as well, so it wasn't the only thing for two months).

After that an edging was added to the bottom edge of the skirt:

Then the bodice was crocheted onto the skirt (one piece at a time) after gathering it at the top:

Next was making two teeny sleeves (can you believe how small bebby arms are?!):

Setting in the sleeves was a bit difficult, since I had only ever set in sleeves on adult sweaters before, and this was so small and fiddly, but it turned out well:

So here's the gown, with all the actual crocheting finished:

Here's the little bonnet that goes with it, pre-ribbons:

Post-ribbons (completely finished):

And the gown with ribbons, completely done:

And, I had to make it super cute, so when I put it in the gift bag I put it on a teddy bear:

I was super excited to give it to her, which I did at her shower this morning. She loved it! I'm so excited to see it on the baby when he is blessed in December. And I'm equally excited that I can now post this, since she's seen it now.