FO: Christmas Accessories

Holy cow it's past Valentine's Day and I still haven't posted about these, lol. Whoops.

After making my Christmas Dress, I had over a yard of fabric left with which to make matching pieces for the others in my life. When mentioning this to my friend, he asked if I was going to make him a tie to match my dress, which of course made me ask, "Do you want a tie to match my dress?" And this project was born :) 

Having never made a tie before, I just followed the free Men's Tie tutorial and pattern from Purl Soho. In the pattern it says that it's designed to be 2 inches shorter than standard, so I lengthened the pattern 2 inches off the bat thinking it would put it back to regular tie length. I very much fussy cut the fabric to keep the tree in the center of the tie when worn, which means I did not cut this fabric on the bias as suggested. It seems that both of these things combined made for a tie that was comically too short. He was able to tie it, and he was a good sport and wore it to church with me, but the end of the tie was only about 2 inches past the knot once tied, and it stuck off to the side very obviously, lol.

I'm pretty proud of how well this was constructed though :) Lots of ironing and hand sewing, but it really is not difficult at all to make a tie.

This was also the perfect opportunity to use my brand spanking new personalized labels I bought during the Dutch Label Shop sale on Black Friday weekend. I've never had any of these made just because I could never decide on a design and always planned on making one that matched my blog. I've seriously wanted to make some for years - ever since they became popular on the blogosphere - but not deciding on a design always kept me from it. This year I decided to just get something simple in a color I liked - and here we are :) Done is better than perfect, yes?

And look how great it looks on the tie back! When I put it how a tie should be (like in this photo) the label works to hold the bottom of the tie in place, but given that it was way too short this didn't work so well in real life, lol. But this is my first tie and my first time ever using my own labels, so there's that.

After the tie, I went about making toddler dresses for my little ladies. I just grabbed a plain white t-shirt from Hobby Lobby for each girl and cut it off to match a dress they already have and I liked the length of. Then I just laid the shirt on the fabric and kept the a-line shape going to create the skirt. I serged the whole thing together (except for top stitching the hem) and this project seriously took about 30 minutes including decision making time.

And I made 2 of them :) I had originally planned to jazz up the top in some way - maybe with a riffle or some covered buttons or something just to make it not so plain. In the end I could never decide and it was Christmas time, so they just wore them as you see. They look cute in anything, so it was all good. Sadly, I did not get a single photo of all of us, or even just of the girls in their dresses. We looked cute at church though, trust me, lol.

Even with making these extra projects in my beloved tree fabric I still have a nice chunk of it left, so maybe next Christmas will see new coordinating pieces that fit better. I'm mostly just glad I finally made my dress happen, so these little side projects are just an added bonus.