I having been dying to post these! I was actually prepared this year and we had our Christmas pictures taken the week before Thanksgiving. Sure, I stayed up until 3:00 am the night before finishing the outfits but it was so nice to have them done! (Scroll down to the bottom of this post for the “how to” on the outfits.)
O.K. so here is the lowdown on what I did.
For the girls: I bought this fabric last year after Christmas from Chez Ami and was just itching to finally use it. I knew that I wanted cozy yet girly dresses in a Hanna Anderson like style. Christine at From an Igloo posted this nice tutorial on how to make a cute twirl dress using knit fabric and it was just what I wanted.
Christine used the Lil Blue Boo Hoodie Pattern for her top. I own this pattern too and highly recommend it. See my post about it HERE. However, it doesn’t go up to my girls’ size and I was being chicken about guestimating up.
I looked through my patterns and found
I like the gathered sleeves and the length of the bodice but I didn’t want it to cross over in the front like it does in the pattern. I ended up cutting two of the back bodice pieces for each dress and then just cutting down the neckline a bit on the front bodice piece. Once I had my top, I followed Christine’s tutorial for making the gathered twill skirt.
For the boys: I wanted to make an applique using the fabric from the girls dresses. At first, I was thinking maybe a snowman and having the polka dot fabric be his scarf and band on his hat.
Then I googled boy’s Christmas appliques and found this cute little truck idea. I like how it’s a bit more “boyish” and I love the button wheels. I used all knit fabric so that I could just straight stitch the applique and not have to worry about fraying. (Quick and simple was my goal as this was all happening at about 2:00 am after finishing the girls dresses.) Go HERE for my tutorial on straight stitch applique.
