Sewing: All Dressed up for Christmas

I use every Christmas and Easter as my excuse to get the kids nice new church outfits. Head to toe. Sometimes I buy them, sometimes I make them. This year I decided to treat myself to a new dress too and make us all cheesy matchy matchy. I had a lot of ideas, but after seeing this darling dress at Gap and a little encouragement from my mom to make it myself, my mind was made up. So its not an original idea, but I love it!
Elyette's dress is red taffeta and ruffling on the collar and bodice. A cute bow in front and exposed tulle ruffles under the skirt. Getting the tulle to line up right was a pain, but all in all, the dress worked well.

My dress was modeled after Elyette's. Same ruffling, but made from a medium weight gray suiting fabric with a red taffeta bow. For future occasions I'll change that up, like add belt loops and a belt. My dress was a huge pain, actually. It had a lot of fussy pleats and it fit really oddly. So it took a lot of seam ripping and adjustments to get to a decent looking dress for me...Oh and we made flower clips to wear in our hair.
I made a simple vest for Jack out of the same fabric from my dress. I used a pattern meant for older boys and men as my guide. I eyeballed the size for Jack. He was napping when I made it and I failed to take into account that he has a LONG torso, so it was a rather short (we just hiked up his pants :)). Oh well, can't win them all. As you can tell from the picture, he personalized it with his drool.

And these pictures are just because I thinks she's beautiful!