Blog- Christmas 2021 fashion

Hello all!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Mike and I had a quiet time with my family! When Mike and I went to visit his family (my in-laws) for their Christmas celebration we swung by the Jo-Ann fabric up there because its huuuuge and has a fantastic selection of fabrics! And even quilting machines! Lots of them!

So we went there looking for special Christmas fabric for Mike’s shirt. And that is exactly what happened! We found this cute Peanuts fabric!
It’s a pale green like a light mint with of course the Classic characters; Charlie Brown,Snoopy, and Lucy. It alls has a classic truck in red with a Christmas tree in the bed. Sooo cute! The only problem there wasn’t enough fabric to make the whole shirt. Nowhere else in the store did they have that fabric. It was just a little bit over a yard and a half. And for Mike’s shirt I need at least 3 yards. Because the front pieces are very long and the back piece needs to be cut on the fold.  But because it was super cute and I figured I could come up with a clever way to make it work I went ahead and purchased the Peanuts fabric.
 
Fast forward to December 24th. Christmas Eve, I started to lay out the oattern pieces to  I could do. I’ve already decided that the best choice would be to have the peanuts fabric be the front pieces of the shirt. That still left me fabric enough to maybe do the pockets and the sleeves. And of course he needed to have a matching mask to go with his ensemble. I looked at the fabrics that I had at home and I had Reds and had greens but they greens I could do. I’ve already decided that the best choice would be to have the peanuts fabric be the front pieces of the shirt. That still left me fabric enough to maybe do the pockets and the sleeves. And of course he needed to have a matching mask to go with his ensemble. I looked at the fabrics that I had at home and I had reds and had greens but they were the wrong color green. I had prepared some fabrics that I was going to use to make curtains in the craft room. It was a Robert Kaufman brand and it was inspired by Dr. Seuss. So it was red and white striped!
The red just happen to match the red of the truck that was on Mike’s shirt. I had big enough pieces of the fabric to make the back of my shirt be the red and white stripes and I decided that the pockets would be really snazzy as striped pockets too! I kept the sleeves the original fabric as well as the collars . I had three choices of buttons. I had a pale green that matched perfectly and  a darker green that matched the tree in the truck on the shirt, and then finally I had some red buttons that matched the red. I decided that the red would be the best option since there was plenty of green on the shirt already. 

After laying out all the pattern pieces I cut it out and sewed it up as I normally do! I was really pleased with how well the shirt came out!

All that was left was to make something for myself! The same time that we were up at my in-laws I purchased some fabric for myself has a tan background with Cardinals on it, which happens to be my favorite bird! I purchased 4 yards of the fabric because I wanted enough to either make a skirt or a dress or a blouse and a pair of pants! And 4 yards is more than enough for my size!

I decided that I didn’t want to make a full dress out of the fabric. But I knew I wanted to make address. When I was searching for red for Mike shirt I found some gorgeous red fabric that had sparkly thread throughout it. It’s a woven fabric that was a rich red. I had just about 3/8 of a yard because it was a remnant that I had purchased! But 3/8 of a yard was a perfect size for the bodice of my dress.  I sewed the right sides together using my serger and then put it on my mannequin. I did the same for the skirt fabric after I decided what length I wanted it to be I measured it out to being 22 inches long. The top I measured out to be 12 inches for the bodice. I decided that pleats would be really cute on the skirt part of my dress. So using my ruler I measured out pleats on the right side and pleats on the left side until they came to the center. The skirt was still incredibly wide for me but I didn’t want to cut it up in less of the pattern. So I added gathers to the skirt. While attaching it to the bodice I created gathers of fabric and pinned them in place so that when I serged  them they would be serged automatically into gathers. I had already serge both the top part of the bodice as well as where the hem would be on the skirt so all I needed to do was to turn it under it once again and topstitch both of them down. 

That is exactly what I did. I also added some darts along the rib cage on both sides of the bodice. Once again I had made a strapless top which is ironic considering that I don’t like being cold. But I had my red bolero jacket which matched perfectly as a cover. I still believe that I will add straps from the leftover red fabric or maybe I’ll use some of the cardinal fabric to make wide straps for the bodice.

 I topped it off with my black above the knee boots and my black and white houndstooth fedora. And I also made a large black satin sash to cinch in at my waistline!!!  

I am very pleased with how my dress turned out! And I’m definitely pleased with how Mike’s shirt turned out! And I was very proud when we walked into my aunt’s home wearing our handmade ensembles. And it was really cool that people thought  it was store bought, and were pleasantly surprised and impressed that I had made it and designed it myself!

Upcoming was the day after Christmas and celebrating Christmas with my parents. Of course I made an ensemble for that too. I will have to tell you about that another time! 

Thank you for reading!

Take care and be well! 

Love,

Monica