Georgia Vintage Christmas Dresses

I absolutely love having special Christmas outfits for my kids. The last two years my mom (aka Grandma Jane) has volunteered to make the kids Christmas dresses / outfits, but since she was out of commission recovering from her aortic valve replacement surgery, I knew I was definitely on duty this year. Generally I like to make the girls coordinating looks, but this year I decided to go for completely matching. I used my Georgia Vintage Dress Pattern and made Savannah a size 6 and Matilda a size 5 and they both looked absolutely darling (if I do say so myself). Now I don’t have any super-wonderful pictures of the girls in their dresses because sometimes I just like to try to enjoy the moments with my kids and not have them pose for pictures………and I definitely was all about that over this holiday season. So my ‘fourth child’ (Missy Mannequin) will have to do.

The Georgia Vintage Dress Pattern is probably my favorite pattern that I have ever created. I’m not exactly sure why, but I just love the fit, the vintage-vibe and the overall feminine look of this dress. Plus it looks great with so many different fabrics and trims. The pattern goes up to a size 10, but I don’t know how many years I can get away with something this girly for Savannah. She turns 6 in a couple months and has some pretty strong opinions about clothes these days. Luckily for me, she and Matilda were in LOVE with their Christmas dresses this year.

I selected this vintage reindeer fabric that I found at Joann Fabrics for the main focal print of the dress. My mother-in-law took the girls and I into downtown Chicago to see ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ the musical at the Broadway Playhouse, so I thought this fabric would work perfect. We got to see the show, went to lunch and spent a little time in the American Girl store………it was a wonderful day. But once I selected the reindeer fabric, I wanted to choose a more traditional print for the accent fabric. I went with this red, green and gold taffeta (also found at Joann’s) and red velveteen for the collar. If red velveteen doesn’t shout Christmas, I don’t know what does.

I pretty much sewed the dress according to the way I wrote the pattern. The only adjustment I made was on the skirt. There was only 3 yards left of the plaid taffeta fabric at Joann’s and even though it was 60″ wide, it wasn’t going to be enough for two dresses. So rather than doing a double layer skirt as the pattern calls for, I chose to do an accent band at the bottom of the overskirt. It was a very easy adjustment and gave a similar look with less fabric.

I also used rick rack trim on the bib front of the dress and added it into the seam of the front waistband. I added a layer of rick rack on top of the bottom of the front waistband as well. Now I will warn you, velveteen can be pretty messy to work with and I did have lots of little bits flying around, but it was worth it. I love the classic look it gives to the dresses.

As for our little 2-year old, Caspian Finn, he wore his red corduroy shirt from last year and had a handsome red sweater on another day. He’s looking mighty grown up these days. The girls got to wear their dresses quite a bit in December, to the musical in the city, to their school performances and parties and to Christmas Eve mass. On Christmas Day the girls wore their dresses from last year since they still fit. I know it seems like a lot of work to make special clothing for the holidays, but trust me it’s worth it. These are the pieces your children will keep in their memories forever!