Merry Christmas Dresses

For the past 2 years now, we've had really good professional pictures taken in the "winter." Now that the Merry Christmas cards are out, I can share the pics.

This year I wanted to make the girls' dresses for our family pictures. I knew in my head what I wanted and had a lot of fun perusing the lovely fabrics at my favorite local fabric shop - Scrapbooks, Etc (they really ought to change their name - you know to showcase the fact that they have such awesome fabric selections). I knew I wanted yellow and grey and was thinking pink or purple. When I saw these, it was a match!

I like matchy matching the girls, but wanted to make the dresses a tad different. I made a really easy modification to the pattern and gave "A" a yellow stripe across the bottom and gave "I" a yellow stripe down the middle - loved the result.

At the last minute, I decided to make them hairbows and I love how they turned out! Funny how a little rectangle can be pinched together and turned into a lovely bow. (That's pink felt wrapped around the middle 'pinch' to hold the bow together.)

Pattern: Sweet Little Dress Pattern by Leila & Ben

Fabrics: both are Robert Kaufman, Free to Grow

(I also used the yellow in this project)

And for fun, because I cannot think of much in the world that is cuter than this face right here!

I will confess that Izzie's dress is not exactly how I envisisioned; what I wanted was this (below - longer bell sleeves with yellow ends) but it fit her terribly! The sleeves were HUGE and made the whole dress look just wrong! So first, I tried adding elastic inside the yellow sleeve ends - didn't work.

So sadly, I had to cut them off and go with the regular cap sleeve with elastic (like the pattern called for) but making the change made for a perfect fit. Yay!

One more shot of the cuties for good measure ...