My first homemade Christmas Dress.

Rosemary had her Christmas program last night. It was confusion of the loveliest kind. Most of the little preschoolers stood on the stage like dears in headlights, while a couple of them jumped up and down on the bleachers and frolicked around - not a part of the program, but it definitely stole the show.

She currently attends a Christian school, so the program was definitely about the story of Christmas. There were angels fluttering around the stage, wise men and shepherds, King Herod made a special appearance, and Mary/Joseph/and Baby Jesus even made an appearance (Rosemary asked me if it was the real Mary and Joseph!).

Next year she'll be attending public school, so that will probably be the last of all that, which makes me feel sad and nostalgic ... and terrified that I have to send my child off to kindergarten next year. I can't even think about it.

Anyhow, the Christmas program was earlier than I anticipated it would be and we got very little notice. So, once I did get notice, I knew I had to get to work, because I intended to make her a Christmas dress this year. I decided to go with another version of the Oliver + S dress I made awhile ago. For awhile, I was planning on doing a more difficult looking dress with a zipper and then I decided I had enough irons in the fire, and I'm glad I did because I love her dress.

I don't know if you've noticed this yet, but this is basically the 'Rosemary sees a camera pose.' It could be worse, I suppose.

So I made this dress, sewed some rick-rack over the top seem, which made me love the dress so much more. The one I made earlier didn't look too incredible on the top seem, and neither did this one. The rick-rack fixed it up, though.

It's a pretty billowy dress, and I was hoping that making it the right size, exactly to the measurements would fix it. I lengthened the first dress by a couple inches and thought that was the problem, but no, it's the dress.


I brought the dress up to our local fabric store to see if they had any thoughts on the matter, and putting a tie in the back was wisely suggested.

This is where I have to say that I am so stinkin' proud of myself. First, I made up a dress and it looked pretty good. Second, I wasn't totally happy with it, so I ripped the seams and used some of the extra fabric to make a tie. And it looks great! Not to toot my own horn or anything ...