Ice Cream Dress and Peekaboo Bonnet for Clementine

Clementine is almost two. This is my favorite age. I love babies but they are so demanding and three is towards the end of the really cute phase (still cute but the baby is pretty much gone by then). At two they're still chubby and babyish but they have a few words and a sense of humor. This little one has always been a firecracker but she's totally cracking us up lately. Of course, it's not so funny when she's up for at least an hour in the middle of the night wanting to play five out of seven nights of the week. But I know that will stop eventually. I just want to freeze this forever somehow. But also not, you know?she has hurty teeth.The dress is the adorable Ice Cream Dress by Oliver+S, which I have been wanting to make for so long now. It's possibly my favorite Oliver+S pattern. I love the little notches in the neckline and pockets. And that yoke! Adorbs. The bonnet is my pattern, the Peekaboo Sunbonnet, which reverses to a natural linen with cream piping inside. I made a size 2/3 to see how that would fit and as you can see it's a little too big, but it will fit by the end of summer for sure.The  Ice Cream Dress pattern goes together very nicely; the only hitch for me was that the head-hole wasn't quite large enough. Finished the whole thing, tried to put it on, and it wouldn't go over her head. DOH!I had actually read about this over at the Ice Cream Social Sewalong over at Badskirt last summer (which  is really fun to read through if you think you might want to make this dress). I think I remember one other person having this problem so I don't think it's a common one, and it's also entirely possible that I didn't sew the neckhole seam allowance wide enough. But. I wasn't about to pull the whole thing out and do that over again, I am way too stubborn to do something sensible and time-consuming like that. Luckily, I thought of a quicker way to fix the problem (which you can see below). Next time I am going to check this BEFORE the whole thing is finished.

<style="text-align: center;"="">vintage button from Whipstitch, blogged hereI added a slit to the center back by pulling out the seams between the yoke section (yellow flower fabric by Joel Dewberry) and center section (cream dot fabricm, It's a Hoot by Moda) just in the very middle and cut a slit a couple inches down into the center section. Then I sewed a narrow piece of bias tape to the inside of the slit, flipped it over to the outside and tacked it down and resewed the sections together again. Fixed! And perfect for summer! Can't wait to get some more pictures of it on her once it warms up a little more and she doesn't have to wear it with jeans, heh.Speaking of summer...I've been doing some boy sewing for Elliot lately in anticipation of summer and I've decided to post all of my latest boy projects together next week on the blog. Dana's going to be doing the same! So let's Celebrate the SUMMER boy next week....SURPRISE!! It's going to be less involved than the normal CTB series and will last just 5 days, but I'll have some pattern reviews, a book review, a giveaway, and maybe a tutorial? It'll be a nice mini-version of Celebrate the Boy, summer-style.Sound like fun? Feel free to post your summer boy projects to the Celebrate the BOY Flickr Pool so we can see what you're up to. We'll feature some of our favorites as usual as part of the celebration. The fun starts Monday!