3 girls. 3 dresses. These are for the holiday events were are going to in the next few weeks. They have already been out of the house and christened with chocolate stains and a button replacement. I made them from a pattern in this book. The cranberry red and yellow are in a mini corduroy and the slate blue is in a brushed sueded corduroy type fabric, all from fabric depot here in Portland.
Detail of back closure.
Miss Liddy gets hers in yellow and it stays on for about 5 minutes. Have I not heard of an iron?
So, while I was making these Sadie and I had a little talk-
Sadie: Are these our Christmas dresses?
Me: Yes, do you like them?
Sadie: Yes, but they need more ribbon. All over. (Motioning a lot) And they need to be more beautiful. With more ribbon. Like a fairy. Like a fairy Christmas dress. Actually, I want to be a Christmas fairy. (Actually is her favorite word)
Me: Um. . . okay. Well, maybe Santa can bring you a fairy dress and this can be a holiday dress, you know? It doesn't have to be both.
Sadie: Yes! And these holiday dresses need more beautiful beautiful ribbon. Like this ribbon (She pulls a woven ribbon out of my box and flips it to the wrong side with all the crazy threads showing) Like this ribbon, but I want this side out, the side that looks like a rainbow.
Me: Mmmmm.
Okay, so I didn't use that woven ribbon, I didn't have enough and I wasn't going to use the backside, regardless, but I had a lot of this lovely velvet ribbon on hand. I finished the dresses as they are now and then just had them lying around for a few days, trying to decide how to make them more beautiful and also hoping they were fine as they were. And they are. They girls love them and wear them all the time, like just about everyday. Delia has mentioned she wishes hers was bigger and more fancy (pantomiming a huge wide skirt) and just this morning she told me her baby doll needs a matching dress with easter eggs and flowers on it. For Christmas.
I do feel a little guilty pushing my minimal medieval/folksy design aesthetic on my girls who would prefer these to be much more flashy, but they seem happy with them and can always wear their fairy skirts over the dresses. To make them more beautiful.
