Kate's Christmas Dress: The Cottage Mama Party Dress Pattern Remix

Is everyone is getting all of their Christmas decorations packed up and put away?  You are probabaly better than me and alreay have it done!!   I wanted to take a second to share a few last Holiday pictures of Kate's Christmas dress this year.  I know everyone is ready to move on to Valentine's Day, but I am still tying up loose ends from the holiday season! 

 

Back that first week in December, I had a one day break from intense Open House sewing to knock out Kate's dress for Breakfast with Santa.  I had picked out a pattern by the Cottage Mama called the Party Dress.  If you have followed the blog since we began in June, you might remember that I also used only of Lindsey's beautiful patterns for Kate's birthday bonnet on her first birthday.  Her tutorials are top notch and always turn out beautiful results!   I modified the Party Dress pattern a bit to be what I needed for our Holiday version. 

 

 I had been hanging onto some really cool scrapbook trim roses that I thought would be a darling accent to a sash.  I was totally impractical with my fabric choice for this dress and used a beautiful iridescent,t dry-clean only, taffeta.  As usual, a coupon at Jo-Ann's helped me out, and I think the whole dress cost around $18.00. Grandmas vintage red button's with rhinestone centers were the perfect selection for this keepsake dress.   Instead of fabric closures for the buttons use some black bracelet-making elastic thread, purely for time-saving reasons!  I attached the cream rose trim to a long satin ribbon, as as you can see in the pic below, needed  a bit stronger tacking, because when Kate suffered from Santa Meltdown, all that thrashing about un-tacked a side of my sweet accent roses!  So for most of our pictures, her pretty dress looks a bit, ummm, shall we say, unkempt! We had just enough leftover cream rose trim that we were able to squeak out a cute headband as well. 

 

I really wanted a full little skirt and pretty tailored bodice.  It's a pet-peeve of mine if arm holes are too loose under the arms - I know...perfectionist!  So, I altered the pattern a bit to personalize the sizing to Kate's measurements, making two, uh hum...yes two, muslin practice bodices.  We also made a super simple tulle petti-coat out of cream tulle that helped hold the skirt out. 

  

And the final, and most important piece, was the precious little purse, compliments of Grandma Charla.  That last picture where she's taking her curly little head and walking out swinging her purse could have been captioned "I'm outta here Santa!"  She was not impressed with Santa...at all.

 

 

 If you are visiting us from Project Run and Play, welcome!  We are so glad you stopped by.  As always, I love to hear from all of you.  Good luck getting all those Christmas decorations down!

Happy Tuesday,
Jenny

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