Blessing day

I put my design/patterning/sewing skills to good use this past week and made a dress.  A blessing dress.  I knew that I wanted to make a simple but beautiful dress for Mina.  After I sketched the basic design of the dress I went on the hunt for the fabric.  Ideally I would have used something really beautiful like silk dupioni but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a subpar piece of silk.  There just aren't a whole lot of places in Davis County to buy beautiful fabric.  (Does anyone know of any?  I love hearing about great sources for fabric.)  James, the best husband in the world, braved a trip to JoAnn's and we picked up a yard and a half of a really pretty embroidered and appliquéd cotton.

The fabric, totally wrinkled but you get the idea of the embroidery

After that I made the pattern for Mina's dress.  Before you get too excited I will say that I had a basic dress pattern that I found here.  I modified it according to my design and Mina's measurements.  It was a little tricky trying to draft such a small sleeve but I managed.  

After that I cut out the pieces and sewed them together.  I WISH it had been that quick and easy.

The finished dress

We had Mina's blessing in the Relief Society room at my parents church.  We had wanted to bless her in the Providence ward but we moved.  The following pictures are courtesy of my Mom (thanks Mom!)

Grandma Arbuckle, Grandma Keller, Mandy and Brandon Callahan

Grandpa Arbuckle, Trish, Cole, Travis and Carson Thorpe

Jed and Missy Bradley, Randy Bradley, Missy, Lucas and Jonathan Bradley

Candice, Perrin and Hutch Jorgensen, Liz and Waylon Gomez, Rob and Jake Brimhall and Jolene Bradley

Bishop White, James, Me and Mina; introducing everyone

More family!

There was a HUGE circle for Mina's blessing:

Jamie Bradley, Brent Beardall, Rob Brimhall, Hutch Jorgensen, Randy Bradley, Alex Jacobsen, Brian Bradley, Bishop White, James, Jed Bradley, Jordan Keller, Brad Keller, Grandpa Arbuckle, Chad Glover, Jeremy Deetz, Brandon Callahan and Travis Thorpe

 James did a wonderful job and gave our daughter a beautiful blessing. I was so proud of him and I love him so much!

There were a lot of cameras taking pictures, which explains that we aren't looking at the camera