Holiday Sewing

I'm not going to post about EVERYTHING I'm working on, at least not yet... that might ruin a surprise or two.  But over the past weekend and one weekday evening, I did start a couple of little holiday dresses for a few of my dolly acquaintances.

I have a bin of small pieces of some fancy fabrics.  It includes some satin, some tulle and organza, and a couple of pieces of both silk duppioni and silk taffeta.  Dresses that were worn just one holiday season by the Grands sometimes make it into the 'potential fabric' stash too.

This year I actually have a commission to make two dresses for someone, and one potential commission if that lady likes the dresses, and a couple for the grand-dolls.

The fabric for this dress came in a large bag of odds and ends from a cousin, who dropped it off at my aunty's, who decided she didn't need any of it and said "take what you want and get it out of my living room".  You don't have to ask ME twice!

The skirt and sleeves are the plaid taffeta, and the bodice is a bright blue sort of fake velveteen.  You can't really tell but there's a fine black stripe running through it about every eighth of an inch.  I lined the bodice with some white rayon, and ended up hand stitching it down over the sleeve seam.

Once I have the skirt attached, all that remains is some Velcro at the back neck and we're done.

The fabric for this dress was one of Miss A's size two toddler dresses.  It was so adorable I couldn't part with it.  The skirt is white lining covered with pink sparkle organza.  The minute she spotted that dress she decided it was for her.  I have to remember to hide stuff better!

 

It is really pretty, though, very sparkly. 

But she reminded me that she has TWO dolls who need holiday dresses.  I'm up to six that need sewing now... so I went looking for some holiday fabric at JoAnn's this week.  Would you believe there was NO plaid taffeta to be had?  None.  Lots of solid stuff for special occasion, but no plain.  There was one bolt of some embroidered satin, and one bolt of gold poly with diagonal tucks sewn in.  I came away with a couple of pieces of poly knit with a sequin-type pressing, very sparkly, in four colors.

We'll see how that works out.

Meanwhile I ordered some red/green plaid fabric with gold lurex threads running through it from fabric.com.  Hopefully that makes enough choices for six dresses.

Yikes!  Time to get busy!

Sew on...