Earlier this month Shea from Empty Bobbin Sewing Studio shared her Oliver + S Christmas pajama tradition with us. Well, she has another Christmas sewing tradition: dresses! And she is here today to share the ones she has made these past several years. By the way, Shea is also the author of School of Sewing, a fantastic sewing book which we will be talking more about tomorrow. Be sure to come back again tomorrow for a chance to win her book! Thanks so much for being here Shea!
Each year for the last four years, I have sewn an Oliver +S pattern as a Christmas dress for my daughter. I try to not get too wrapped up in holiday sewing projects that I don’t get to truly enjoy the “making†part of handmade. Focusing on just a few meaningful projects, I’ve found, is what works best for me. And these Christmas dresses are always at the top of my list.
I am an easy sell when it comes to cross wovens— fabrics with different thread colors in the warp and weft. They really let the updated but classic lines in Oliver + S patterns stand out, I think. My tendency to use these types of fabrics really comes shining through when I look at these pictures… not a print in sight! Oops!
The first Christmas dress I ever made her was a Fairy Tale Dress. Oh, man. Did I ever love this dress. In the back of my mind, I wanted it to look like a little girl’s dress in the 1950’s.
We live in the Midwest, where it can be very cold and snowy at Christmas. I wanted the sleeves to be a little longer, so I swapped out the sleeves and used the 3/4 length ones found on the Playdate Dress, another Oliver + S pattern I had made. This dress was made from Robert Kaufman Interweave Chambray in Pepper. It’s not visible in the photo, but the dress has a black sash/bow in the back. Add a black collar and a few tiny buttons, and I was happy with her little 1950s-ish dress.
When she was in kindergarten, I made her a Library Dress, a pattern name that thoroughly amused her as she lives for “library day.†The fabrics were Robert Kaufman Interweave Chambray in Pepper (again!) and In the Beginning Fabrics Modern Solids in Slate. I took advantage of the invisible zipper modification for this dress.
This was also the year that I fell down the rabbit hole and made a matching dress for her Kit (18-inch) doll. For doll clothes, I like to browse the options at Pixie Faire, looking for something that has at least a feature or two that is similar so that I can avoid reinventing the wheel entirely. The Kimono Dress fit the bill. A few tweaks to the construction and I had a pretty close match!
The blue Garden Party Dress of 2014 was probably my favorite color palette to use. I am a sucker for blues. These were Studio E Peppered Cottons; the main fabric in Ink. The doll version I made by making the 1930’s Gathered Dress from Pixie Faire.
This year, she requested “a red dress. Because red is the most Christmas-y color, Mom.†So! A red dress it is. Well … red-ish. I used a Peppered Cotton in Garnet and a Westminster shot cotton in Bordeaux to make another Library Dress, this time with short sleeves. I again used the invisible zipper modification for the back. There’s not a matching doll dress yet, but I doubt I make it to Christmas without an official “pretty please, Mom?â€
My daughter is learning her way around a sewing machine, so I really enjoy talking about the pattern and fabric options with her as she’s gotten a little older. She now likes to specify design features she’d like (this year it was “a band or sash in the middleâ€) and I love seeing her get excited as we pick and cut out the fabric.
As long as she will let me, I will sew Christmas (and birthday and back-to-school) dresses for her. And then, one day… I hope she will sew a dress for herself.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Â
Phosphor Copper Mesh,Mesh Copper,Phosphor Bronze Coil,Phosphor Bronze Coils
YingKaiMo Metal Net Co.,Ltd. , https://www.ykmmetalnet.com