Christmas Dresses 2011

So if you're my friend on Facebook, you probably saw my post about finishing up the girls' Christmas dresses the day before we left for Utah.  I was SO excited to finally be done with all my Christmas sewing, plus they turned out even better than I expected.  Truth be told, they'd been "finished" before, but didn't quite... um... work.  I mean, yes, the girls could wear them, but they had really wonky waistlines, and were just kind of ugly.  Well, not anymore.  I'm pretty excited about how they came out.

This is the only picture I have of all three dresses together.  I had to steal it from my mom.

Yeah, I know.  Lately, my girls seem to refuse to want to be all together for pictures.  Either that, or we're in too big of a hurry to get to church.  Something like that.

Now for a little more detail--

Cailin's dress:

(Yeah, she fell on our stairs and scraped up her nose. Poor girl.)

White satin-y bodice, green diamond pin tucked fabric skirt.  I fell in love with the green fabric before I'd figured out how exactly I wanted the dress to look, but this is what I came up with.

Cailin's is the only dress without a sash.  I'm not sure exactly why I didn't put one on hers, but I really like the way it came out anyway.  The little row of topstitching above the gathering just pulled it off for me.  Also, it really does fit her better than this picture portrays--the bodice doesn't actually drown her, I swear.

Her dress also ended up with buttons in the back, as I didn't make it with a stretch velvet like the other two.  Yeah, I did buttonholes without a buttonholer.  You may now tell me that I am awesome.  Thank you.  :)

Now for the other two dresses... Yeah, these pictures are even worse.  Why can't my kids stand still?  Crazy girls.  At least they like each other, right?

You can see the sashes here:

All I said was stop touching each other and hold still.  They gave me this.  I can't stop laughing every time I look at this photo.  They're posing exactly the same!  And I love Janey's face.  Hahaha.

And here, we finally have, after a rousing round of "Put your hands on your head.  Put your hands on your hair.  Put your hands on your stomach.  Put your hands to your sides." (*click*)  

Oh silly girls.  

Anyway, like I said before, stretch velvet on the tops, then some specialty apparel fabric on the bottoms.  They have sashes, and I really like how they pulled the dresses together--you'll just have to believe me when I say they didn't work before I put them on.  I also actually really like how the necklines came out--they're sort of a half-turtleneck.  I was afraid that they wouldn't stretch enough to get their heads through, but since I used my serger, which allows for a little more stretch, they worked out just fine.  Yay.  :)

So there they are, the Christmas dresses of 2011.  I love 'em, and I'm glad they're done.  Ha.