Christmas Dresses 2014

Christmas Dresses!

This year's Christmas dresses were a fun project.  After all that excitement on my part about not having to sew Elsa dresses for Halloween I turned around and asked the girls if they wanted Princess Anna dresses for Christmas.  Silly me.  :)  I borrowed a friend's Simplicity pattern for Anna/Elsa/Frozen dresses and tweaked them to fit my girls.  Grace's dress was an attempt to be true to Anna's colors with Hancock's limited selection, and Leah wanted the style of Anna's dress but 'white like an angel'.  She chose shiny white for the main portion of the dress, and the sleeves, bodice inset, and hem have a layer of white lace over the shiny white satin.  I was able to use up a lot of gold and silver Clover fusible bias tape as trim on these dresses.

I am pleased to see that every year their Christmas dresses get a little bit better.  They fit better and they are most definitely better constructed.  I still have loads to learn, but the annual ritual of sewing Christmas dresses makes it easy to mark the time and see how far I have come.  Ironically, when I looked back to last year's Christmas dress post, I was so proud of those dresses.  One year later, I see the faults of those dresses and how I could have done better.  Sewing is such a great hobby because you will never be done learning...

Things I like about these dresses:

1.  The overall fit.  These were a mix of a commercial pattern and a self-drafted alterations.  I used size 6 for both girls because that matched their chest/waist measurements.  Grace's was lengthened in the bodice about an inch or so.  Leah's was lengthened another two inches beyond that and I made the skirt longer on hers as well.  She's a string bean, no doubt about it.  It was nice to have armscyes and sleeves from a commercial pattern.   I feel like I did a better job this year of having the right amount of ease in the pattern.  Last year's dresses were well drafted (from scratch) in the sense that they fit but they could have used a bit more ease because the fabric was stiff/nonstretch.  Leah has worn her red dress plenty but Grace's gold one only got worn literally two or three times (grrr).  She loved it in December and January and it has hung in the closet ever since gathering dust.  I understand why - its not stretchy/comfy - but its still a bit annoying.  I think this year starting from a commercial pattern helped me get enough ease in there that they are more comfortable and should get lots of wear.  Of course, being Princess Anna doesn't hurt either.  :)

2.  I can't resist mentioning the sleeves.  First, Princess Anna from the frigid Arendale Fjords is one smart princess - long sleeves and collars.  She's my kind of girl!  Every single store-bought Christmas dress has short or no sleeves.  Honestly, who designs such things?  Clearly not someone who lives in the upper Midwest.  Secondly, I am happy to report that between working at the costume shop and sewing more clothes on my own I am no longer petrified by setting in sleeves.  These sleeves (and bodices) are even lined with a nice soft knit so they are more comfortable on the skin.  I wouldn't have dreamed of lining sleeves a few years ago but this was no big deal and they turned out great.

3.  I like the overall design and have Simplicity to thank for that.  I really like the lines of the bodice - the dropped v-waist and the faux bodice inset is cool and very princess-y looking.   I love the mandarin collars.  The scallops on the bottom are a nice touch on Grace's dress.  I opted for skipping the points on Leah's and added extra silver bias trim.

Things I'd like to improve on:

1.  One set of sleeves (Leah's) went in better than the other (Grace's).  Nitpicky, but true.  Both are still miles ahead of where my skills used to be.

2.  Leah's needs a slip or skirt lining.  The white satin is a bit see through.  Not a problem if you wear white tights underneath but she has to be careful not to wear polka dotted or striped underwear under this dress.  :)

3.  The back of the dress opens with a lapped zipper and the juncture of the zipper and the collar was tricky.  I did a better job on the second dress than the first.

These dresses came together very smoothly and easily.  I made them both in about two weeks time, which is pretty good during December craziness.  I even had them done by Dec. 14 in time for their sunday school program.  

The girls love them, which is what really counts.  

I found these dresses incredibly hard to photograph between the shiny fabric and the wiggly girls.  I'll just put these up here for now and if I ever get better pictures I'll swap them out.

Christmas-y Table Runner

This was a fun little project for a family gift exchange.  I painted a ceramic serving plate at our local paint-your-own-pottery place and then made a table runner to match.  I was hoping the recipient would enjoy a little holiday cheer around her kitchen or dining room.

I forgot to take a picture before gifting it so she was nice enough to send me a photo after the fact.

Simple patchwork in true red and green, with a striped red and white binding.  It would have been fun to cut the binding on the bias and make it candy-cane looking but I didn't have enough of the striped fabric.  Next time, maybe.  The quilting is simple cross-hatching.   If I remember correctly the squares were cut at 3'' so they finish at 2.5''.  

This project reminded me how fun patchwork can be so I am looking forward to doing a few quilts in 2015.  We have two family weddings this year so I'll have at least two big quilts to make and this little runner was a good warm up after all the clothes and bags and other non-quilt things I've been making lately.  Wedding quilt number one here we come....

Olaf Pillow

And.... here we are a month later with a few projects to post.  December just flies by every year, doesn't it?!

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Unless you've been living under a rock for the last fifteen months, you must have met Olaf...

This pillow was a whip-up for a little first grade girl celebrating her birthday with a Frozen party.  I think this might have been our second, if not third, Frozen themed elementary school girly birthday party.  For a previous party, we made this pillowcase, designed by Leah.  The December party was for Grace's adorable little best friend and it was an Olaf party (meaning they decorated snowman shaped cookies).  Grace declared that the gift HAD to be Olaf because it was an Olaf party.  I tried to sway her toward a more neutral/girly gift but there was no budging my stubborn little girl.  Olaf it must be, so Olaf it was.  I did convince her that an Olaf pillow was better (read: infinitely easier to make) than an actual stuffed Olaf.

We took this page from a Frozen sticker book we had floating around the house and I traced it to get a line drawing of the cute little snowman guy.

Here is the hand embroidery - I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

The body is dark grey, stick arms and hair are brown, and I had to go out and buy the orange for the nose because I did not have any carrot orange in my embroidery floss stash.  Imagine that.  

The two girls and I experimented and sketched that carrot nose a million times trying to figure out how to have realistic carrot lines on it similar to the shading in the sticker book.  After many goofy looking carrots that we all thought looked bad it was Grace who finally said, "Why can't you just fill it in all orange?"  Bingo - it worked perfectly and looked far better than any of our sketches.  I guess it didn't occur to me to fill it in since the rest of the drawing was just lines.  I did a sort of long-and-short stitch to fill it in because it was a bit big for satin stitch and I thought the texture was cool.  

We bordered it in pink (Grace's no-budging choice as well - she wouldn't let me do Frozen-blue or even Frozen themed fabric).  I just tried to ignore the clash of pink with carrot orange as best I could.  

Its a 14'' pillow (store bought pillow form) with an invisible zipper in the bottom so it can be washed.  

The gift opening at the party was an absolute flurry of craziness so there was no moment of "Oh, how cute" or "I love it", much to Grace's chagrin.  I have no doubt, however, that the little girl loves her Olaf pillow.  

Shockingly, there have been no pleas of "Can you make me one too?" so I'm just going to let that sleeping dog lie....