Little Miss Sunshine

Something weird is going on. I keep hearing whispering.

I made a quick run up the road to visit Miss America and the children today, and I took Corn Field and Golden Tulip along for the ride. Who's Miss America, you ask? Why, she's our Number One Daughter, that's who. Not only did Corn Field and Golden Tulip wish for some fresh spring air, they were ready for a try-on!

The Blue Eyed Bombshell just adores Corn Field. They will be very happy together. Now that I have the hem pinned up, they will soon be living happily ever after. And her older sister, The Heartbreaker, is a little darling in Golden Tulip. After a couple of minor adjustments and a hem, Golden Tulip will be ready to move in, too.

As for their little brother, the Duke of Cute, he's mainly interested in something called "play."

And I now present...........Little Miss Sunshine:




This one is for The Princess. It will be smocked in blue and dark pink, with perhaps a little green thrown in for good measure. I posted a picture of the fabric and embroidery thread a couple of days ago. The background is a dark lemon yellow; for some reason the scans and photos look a little orangey. I'm using this smocking plate from the same issue of AS&E that I used for Purple Passion:





I really like the look of the scalloped bottom row. So sweet. And I have some ideas for trim, but I really can't concentrate because of all that whispering....

I'm going to reuse the Baby Square Yokes high yoke design for this dress. And just for the record, I always use a full 45" width of fabric for the dress front, and the same for the dress back. The pattern calls for a 36" cut, but I think the extra fullness really adds to the finished appearance of the dress. This pattern really fits The Princess well at this point in her reign.

As I got Amanda The Super Pleater out of her box, I noticed she looked a little bruised. As if she had been pinched or something. Strange.

I removed all except 11 needles and was thrilled that I didn't shed any blood in the process this time. Is someone in here whispering?

I threaded all the needles with quilting thread and got out the Magic Stick and the tape. I used three little pieces of tape to anchor the edge of the fabric to the Magic Stick. Do you hear the whispering, too?



Now we're ready to run through the rollers. Who is doing all that whispering???????

We start out going through the rollers. So far so good. Is that whispering coming from that big bag of fabric over there?????



Almost finished. If you look closely you can see the tape on the Magic Stick. I remove the tape, of course. I don't run it through the pleater, although it's hard to keep my mind straight with all that whispering I hear.....

This comes out of Amanda PERFECTLY the very first time! Yeah, baby!

And that's when I knew for sure about the whispering. Because when I did The Happy Dance, all the fabric in the bag started to applaud. The noise was thunderous.

After an hour of intensive water-drip torture with a bright light shining in its eyes, one of the fabrics in the bag ratted on all the others.

Seems like they had ganged up on Amanda and gave her a little roughing up. Made her promise to be nice to me. Told her they would pull out her needles with a pair of pliers if she stabbed me again. In short, they promised her a good old butt-whupping if she gave me any trouble at all.

They know a desperate woman when they see one.