dressed to impress :: blogmas day 8

“Please wear christmas shirts,” the dress code section of the invitation read. Simple enough…but what if I made a dress? I knew I had five metres of christmas fabric needing a home in my stash, and a cute pattern that had previously been tweaked and fitted. A pretty Christmas dress would be perfect.

The fabric had originally been intended as christmas outfits for my children in 2023. Do you know how excited 17yo and 15yo boys are to wear mummy made outfits matching with their siblings? Less than zero percent excited. I gave it up as a bad joke, and the fabric has been sitting there ever since. Five metres of it. That’s a whole lot of season-specific fabric! I had thought the dress would chew through a solid amount, but there’s still over three metres left! Sadly, the original pattern link has been hijacked, and now redirects to a URL that makes my anti-virus scream in horror, so I can’t share the source.

I cut it out a week or so ago and then procrastinated until the week of the party. By Wednesday I still hadn’t started sewing, and my deadline was looming – to make it even more interesting, the party wasn’t until Sunday night, but I had commitments on Friday night, and we were leaving for Sydney at 5am Saturday, returning just a couple of hours before the party on Sunday. On Thursday, I decided to finally start sewing, and it’s amazing how quickly it came together when I didn’t have to wrangle layers of satin and embroidered tulle! By the time I left home for my event Friday, all that was left to do was the hem, which I finished in short order around 9pm.

The final piece of the puzzle? Matching earrings! On Sunday afternoon, as everyone enjoyed some quiet time carved out of a busy day, I snuck into the craft room, and in under 10 minutes, I had myself some cute sparkly earrings.

I do think I need to hem it a fraction shorter – the original pattern I left additional length and then trimmed, which I forgot to factor in. Ideally I would like it to hit just above the knee. But for the party I needed it for, it was fine.

Now the real question is – should I crack it out Christmas Day as well?