Blessing Dress from Wedding Gown

My friend Kim has two really cute boys, ages 4 and 7.  She just had twins, a boy and a girl.  Kim wondered if I could make a blessing dress for Isla, her baby girl, out of her wedding gown. 

 Gasp!!!  Cut up your wedding dress? 

 Kim eplained that her wedding gown would just sit in the closet and it would probably be there forever.....This way it could be put to good use : ) and enjoyed ♥

 Here is Kim in her wedding dress, isn't she beautiful?

I knew I could do it.  There was machine embroidery around the neck, edging of the sleeve and around the hem.  The hem of the wedding gown was straight in the front, but there was a huge, enormous train.  The train started at the side seams and made a big circle.  The hem was curved.  

I wanted the embroidery from the wedding gown to be on the neck edge, back of the yoke, the  sleeve hem and skirt hem of the blessing dress, similar to the wedding gown.  It was difficult to get a big enough piece for the skirt because of the curve.  

A closeup of the embroidery.

I modelled the pleats on the blessing dress after the pleats on the wedding gown.  I had to add an extra seam in the front of the skirt because of the curvy hem on the wedding gown.

I cut the sleeve for the blessing dress out of the sleeve of the wedding gown.  I didn't gather the sleeve to make it puffy.  Instead, I sewed a big pleat in the cap of the sleeve, to match the pleat on the front of the dress.  

Here is cute little Isla in her blessing dress.
She is so pretty!

Notice the embroidery on the bottom of the skirt :)

What a fun project this was, I really enjoyed designing Isla's dress.

There is more than enough fabric left to sew Isla a baptism dress when she turns 8 years old.   Princess seams in the front would help get the embroidery along the hem of the dress in smaller pieces.  I think a band around the waist would be really pretty, to match the band on the wedding gown.