What to do with your old bridesmaid dress??

My friend Rachel asked me to help her make something special for her cousin's baby. She had the GREAT idea of turning her old bridesmaid's dress that she wore in the couple's wedding, into a baby blanket! The dress was the purple that you see (I cut out small squares from the dress and the entire back of the blanket is the dress as well) and she chose the dragonfly theme because that is what matched the nursery. I loved finding quilting squares on ebay because they already had them cut and placed with matching fabrics so it made it very easy!

I will have to admit this was a lot more tedious than I thought it was going to be ha! It took me a solid 4 hours to sew together all of the individual squares. A GREAT help for this was to get the stabilizer that you can iron the fabric onto. I placed each piece where I wanted it and then ironed them on before sewing them all around. This saved me from sewing each piece together and instead allowed me to just sew straight lines up and across. as you can see I used a decorative stitch around each square

with the purple back flipped over so you can see how the dress was transformed

For Personalization, I added the baby's initials, and "Love, Aunt Rae Rae" in the bottom corner.

So now all of you bridesmaids out there know what to do with those dresses... save them and transform them :) I would be glad to help you do that if you so wish.. just let me know!!