A Morning Wood Surprise

Amazingly, over a week later Juniper's favorite color is still yellow (though she tells me that soon it will be purple, but just not yet). The best thing about yellow is that it isn't pink, but it also looks great on her. To mark the momentous occasion of her first new favorite color in two years, I made her a yellow dress.

I used this tutorial for turning a men's dress shirt into a girl's dress. (Thanks for sending me the link, Mike!) I found one of Jim's old yellow shirts in a box full of biz-cas clothes, and from the looks of things, he never plans on wearing them under normal working conditions again anyway:


And then I spent an afternoon turning it into this:

I used an old cloth napkin for the waistband. I liked the scalloped edge, and it was also the only other fabric I had on hand that was yellow.

I put the finishing touches on the dress after Juniper was in bed. When I was done, I hung it up inside her room on the door knob. At 6:30 the next morning, I heard the sound of her feet pounding down the hallway and she climbed into our bed before I could even open my eyes. I covered her with the blanket, like I always do, and settled in for another ten minutes of sleep. A few minutes later, I heard a giggle, and opened my eyes for the first time to ask her if she'd seen the dress in her room. Her eyes were wide -- not a speck of sleepiness left -- and she just nodded. I closed my eyes again. A few minutes later I pulled back the blanket, and sure enough, there she was -- fully dressed, with white socks pulled up to her knees. She giggled some more and jumped out of bed, so proud of herself for surprising me and so happy with the dress.

I think purple might have to wait a while.

[there is a flickr group for this dress. It's so fun to see what everyone has done.]

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