Dress a Girl Around the World

Dear "Dress a Girl" visitors,
My little page dedicated to Dress a Girl, is currently a work in progress. You will already have found the pattern links on the Dress a Girl UK site. Here, I hope to show you the dresses I've made from those patterns, tell you how easy they are to make (or not perhaps), and any other useful info I can.

I've been working on and off on a pattern hack teenage size pattern of the peasant dress. I hunted the Web for ages trying to find one and gave up, then bought a couple of sewing magazines that had a free pattern on the cover and I'm trying to combine them. Watch this space...
Update - Apologies of you keep popping back to see if I've finished my pattern. I haven't... but I have just heard from someone else who has been much more successful. Hopefully, she'll put it on her own blog soon and I'll add a link as soon as it's there.




I came across this prayer/poem while I was checking the links to the best patterns I have used. I hadn't seen it before - it's quite powerful. I can't find anywhere on her blog to contact Karen to ask her permission to use it but noticed she had taken it from a book, so figured she wouldn't mind it being shared. Please take the time to read it. Then make one dress or pair of shorts.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who sneak Popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never "counted potatoes,"
who were born in places we wouldn't be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can't find any bread to steal,
who don't have any rooms to clean up,
who pictures aren't on anybody's dresser
and whose monsters are real.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories
who shove dirty clothes under the bead and never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren't spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who want to be carried and for those who must,
for those we never give up on and
those who don't get a second chance,
for those we smother and for those who will grab
the hand of anyone kind enough to offer it.

(Adapted from Ina J. Hughes)
from the book Guide My Feet by Marian Wright Edelman