Sugar Pea's Birthday Suit

My little Sugar Pea turned a year old on Monday, so last weekend we had a party for her and her cousin, who turns three this month. I decided on a vintage cowgirl themed cookout in the park for the birthday girls. Naturally, the cake had to go along with the western theme. I briefly considered purchasing Wilton's horseshoe pan, but my thriftiness prevailed and I ended up creating my own "Cut-Up", slicing, dicing, and rearranging a 13" x 9" cake I baked from a mix until it resembled a cowboy boot. I frosted it with my homemade cream cheese icing, and, making it up as I went along, piped some simple designs in red and blue.


Well, of course each girl had to have their own cake, and I wanted to offer a couple of choices to our guests, so I made a chocolate boot too. I made it easy on myself and used store bought icing on this one. Now, my Mom's birthday is sandwiched between her two granddaughters', so I had to throw in her favorite, German chocolate, on the foot of the boot. The designs on this one were piped with more of the cream cheese icing used for the white cake.


The day of the party was absolutely gorgeous, but there were major gusts of wind and swarms of flies to contend with, so I thought I'd be super smart and leave the cakes in the truck where they'd be safe until their big reveal, forgetting that the temperature inside the vehicle would be several million degrees higher than outside. My homemade icing fared much better than Betty Crocker's did. Take that, Betty.


Now every girl ought to have a special outfit for her birthday, especially when it's her first, and most especially when there's a party held in her honor. No ordinary outfit would do for my baby. No, whatever Sugar Pea wore for her first birthday would have to be special, memorable, dare I say chart-toppin'? Dollfaces, I present to you my creation, Sugar Pea's Birthday Nudie Suit.


You may already know of my love of vintage western wear, especially Nudie Cohn and his magnificent, spangled suits. After the ever so sweet Christie sent me Nudie the Rodeo Tailor a while back, I was inspired to craft my own tiny knockoff with some discount fabric, thrifted sequined star appliques, and a lot of glued-on rhinestones. Unfortunately, I have no industrial chain embroidery machine, nor the time to hand embroider intricate designs, so the small embroidered applique stars on the front of the vest and the horse's head were purchased from the fabric store. Nudie's signature gold leather fringe was not in the budget, so I substituted some gold vinyl-coated fabric I cut into fringe after stitching it onto the vest and skirt.


Since Nudie was fond of lining his creations with wildly printed fabrics, both the vest and skirt are fully lined in this delicious Dia de los Muertos themed fabric. I was going for something that would sharply contrast with the red fabric and be a little unexpected, considering the suit was intended for a baby.


The whole glitzy number would never have been possible without some clever pattern drafting and mishap fixin' on my Mama's part. The best part of all is that my Punkin's special first birthday outfit cost less than fifteen dollars to make. Here's my sweet baby impressing her anything western-lovin' great grandpa with her one of a kind ensemble.


Happy birthday, my Sugar Pea. Mama loves you.