Althea's Birthday Nightie (and a lovely gift for me)

A birthday girl in the house!

We have actually had multiple birthdays recently. Fern turned 5 in October and my little baby turned 3 on me in November! Wow. Keep it together Jenn, they are still little and stinking adorable at that. 

Althea was actually born on Thanksgiving Day, and her birthday is the day before mine. Also my husband and my anniversary is in October, Christmas obviously is approaching and my husband's birthday coming up in the first week of January. So we knock out every major holiday / celebration in our house with 3 months. Fun, busy, fun.

Fern received a Frozen nightgown for her birthday from her grandmother and Althea had mentioned that she hoped she was going to get one as well. I checked in with Grandmom though, and found out that was not the case (she was getting some cozy fleecy jams instead- those grams are good at keeping things even!). I had been thinking about doing Christmas Eve nighties for the girls though, and so figured why not get a head start with a birthday nightie. 

I had pinned this dress a while back with the intention of using it for nightgown:

There is a great tutorial that goes along with the post of this dress that was very easy to follow. It is based off the shoulder measurement taken from a dress that currently fits. 

I wanted to make a warm winter nightie though, so I added long sleeves. I also did about 4 rows of shirring a couple inches from the hem of the sleeves to produce a ruffled cuff. I wanted it to be a surprise on her birthday, so I never had her try it on during the sewing process. The end result is a neckline that is a little bit wider than I probably would have left it if I had tried it on her when Amber told me to in the tutorial. I would rather have it be slightly big than to have it be too small to get over her head though, so I'm fine with it. It will fit her for a long time (and the neckline is all handstitched in place!) so it is going to stay that way.

When Althea first opened up the nightie she held it up and said "uh, it's too big," put it down and kept on going with the present opening. Once everything had calmed down a bit though, I explained that it was supposed to be long, she tried it on, and was hooked. She has worn it to bed every day since (except for two days when it was in the wash) and she loves to twirl around and proclaim herself a princess when she wears it. Yes! I just love when they love it.

 The fabric I used for this was given to me by a sweet woman that I have never even met. My husband is the manager of a local shop and was talking to a customer about the fact that I have been sewing, so she brought in a huge box of treasure for him to pass on to me! It was amazing. Look at this stash box:

She gave me all of this stuff! Including the box! There was even some 1/4" elastic in there. This is not just a box of scraps either, I'm talking some serious yardage here. And can you see the little piece of paper clipped to that rose print? A lot of it was labeled with exactly how long each piece was. I see the makings of some sweet Fourth of July outfits and perhaps a mermaid dress of some sorts.  Here is a close up of some of the pretty florals and stripes:

And here is the flannel that screamed nightie at me from the moment I saw it:

So once again, thank you so much Diana! And thank you to my husband for thinking of me at work, and being such a genuinely nice person that people like to do things like this for you.
Here is one more parting shot of my birthday girl seen here taking her chosen birthday balloon aka Rudolph for a walk.

 As I write this, about a week after this picture was taken, she is asleep in her bed, wearing this nightie, with Rudolph sleeping in bed with her. I love the way they latch on to certain things and obsess a bit over them for a while. They take so much pleasure from such simple things.
                           
Happy Holidays!