FO: Christmas Dresses 2022

This was actually a project I took over from my mom from 2021. My mom decided she wanted to make my girls Christmas dresses that year and she grabbed the remainder of this adorable Riley Blake cotton print for the job. She didn't have a pattern at the time, so we raided my stash and came up with Simplicity 1208. Then we had disaster strike in our family and the dresses never got made. This past Christmas, we both thought of the fabric and pulled it all out. At first my mom was going to make them, but time passed and she never started them. I had no other dresses for my girls (and Christmas dresses are a tradition in my family), so I grabbed all the materials and decided to make them myself.

I managed to whip both of these up in just a few nights - which was good because it was the week before Christmas so we only had a few days to take my girls to see Santa and we always have them wear their dresses for pictures. We had just enough of the quilting cotton for the dresses - like literally just barely enough. She had bought some coral pink solid cotton for the lining, which was good because we wanted to do the tie sleeve option.

Word to the wise - don't make the tie sleeves when you're on a time crunch. It wasn't hard, but it was very time consuming to sew these sleeves and I had to make 4 of them. I spent one whole evening just sewing the sleeves, but they did turn out adorable.

Thankfully my mom happened to have buttons that looked great already on hand, so I was able to just plow through making these two dresses and they went together mostly without any issues.

When the dresses were done, they were cute, but they just felt like the needed something to make them really pop. I went to Hobby Lobby and laid lots of different ribbons at the waist to see what looked best, and I eventually settled on this bright green poly satin ribbon. It was Christmasy and it elevated the look of the whole dress in my opinion. It took them from looking homemade to looking professional.

With a few store-bought red bows in their hair and some white tights, we were ready to see the man in red :)

The girls loved their dresses and they loved telling people that I made them, which is always nice. They wore the dresses to Santa and then wore them to church on Christmas day, so we looked very cute. I always wish I could make more things for my kids, but the fac that I have to make 2 of each and that they grow so fast makes it a little more of a task to do. I'm glad I made it happen for these dresses though :) 

Summary:

Fabric: Riley Blake quilting cotton, pink quilting cotton lining

Pattern: Simplicity 1209

Notions: Green ribbon, 6 pink buttons