The 3 Week Late 4th of July Outfits

 Hey look! I made my children adorable matching 4th of July outfits!! 

. . . I only finished them 3 weeks late.

No problem, right? The kids can wear them to church one Sunday looking all matching and adorable!

Only on the Sunday where I got everyone dressed up in these cute new outfits, and we were actually going to be on time for once, and I actually got the girls' hair brushed and braided, our only vehicle large enough to transport the whole family decided to break down. So we didn't even make it out the driveway, let alone all the way to church. Maybe next weekend??

Turns out life, especially life with kids, rarely goes as expected. (For us even acquiring kids didn't go as expected). I've spent years of my life at this point dreaming of having kids and making them special matching outfits for alllllllll the holidays. I figured after years of nannying and fitting in sewing while watching other people's kids I'd have no problem still managing to sew once I became a mom. LOL.

Turns out, as I'm sure anyone can tell you, having children 8-10 hours a day is VERY different from being responsible for multiple little humans 24/7. Also, going from 0 to 4 children over a 9 month period is a HUGE adjustment. Add to that all the foster care stuff that goes with this particular brand of parenting - meetings, trainings, paperwork, and more appointments than I ever could have imagined. (Only 2 this week? Woah, that's nice!) Yeah, making those adorable matching outfits in time for the specific holidays? That's a goal. Maybe one day I'll reach it.

In the meanwhile, here's what went into those 3 week late adorable matching 4th of July outfits.

I decided it would be easiest to use the same pattern for everyone so I could sew the boys' shirts and the girls' dresses assembly line style. The lucky pattern was McCall's 6548. Since Joann's and their $1.99 pattern sales are no longer a thing, I traced off the different sizes I needed. For the girls' dresses I just cut the shirt body pieces off at the waistline mark and added a gathered skirt. The one change I made to the pattern for all 4 garments was to make a back neckline facing rather than finishing the back neckline by sandwiching it in between the collar layers and hand sewing. The facing just hurried up the sewing a little bit.

The red, white, and blue cotton plaid came from the city sewing room last winter. I *think* I had about 5 yards of it, and that was just enough for all 4 garments! As you can see, I didn't stress about pattern matching. . . I made a loose attempt, but it turns out I didn't have the fabric folded just right. (I know, I know, you're supposed to cut plaid as a single layer to get everything lined up perfectly, but I don't have the time and patience for that.)

In an effort to be able to tell all the very close in size garments apart without too much trouble, I used big buttons sewn on with blue thread on my big girl's dress and big boy's shirt,

And smaller buttons sewn on with red thread on my little girl's dress and little boy's shirt. (I betcha my husband will still dress the wrong boy in the wrong shirt though, lol.)

All those buttons got sewn on as I waited in waiting rooms at appointments, sat in front of the computer for a Zoom training, and sat on the bank of the creek, watching the children playing in the water.

That last location is definitely my favorite of all the options. I need more time at the creek and less time in waiting rooms!

And with that, those outfits were done! 3 weeks late, but better late than never, right???

Even without the outfits, we had a very good Independence Day. I managed to make my traditional American Flag fruit pizza (Though it took me almost all day, rather than just an hour or two in the morning like it has in years past.) and we all had a very nice time at the family gathering that evening.

The kids enjoyed the fireworks, only requiring a few reassuring hugs when things got loud.

Maybe next year their plaid outfits will still fit, or maybe by then I will have figured out time management a bit better and I'll actually get new outfits made for the,

One can dream, right?

Meanwhile, I still need to finish the boys' Easter outfits. Once again, better late than never, right????

The Green Taffeta "OOPS" Off-the-Shoulder Christmas Dress

 "On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Twelve Drummers Drumming. . ."

Ok, I think I'd rather pass on that particular gift. I'll take the 3 french hens, the 5 golden rings,  the 6 geese a-laying (my chickens are on their winter strike right now, so any laying birds would be useful), or even the 8 maids a-milking (Although since all of my goats are currently dried off and pregnant, and even when they are in milk I rarely have 8 needing to be milked at the same time, 8 milk maids *might* be over kill.), but please - not the 12 drummers drumming. That sounds rather loud, and I have enough noise in my life right now, thank you very much!

It's been 5 months of silence on this blog however, so on this twelfth day of Christmas I have come to finally do some "drumming" so to speak and share about. . . Christmas? My Christmas Dress this year? Life? Maybe all three? I honestly can't tell you where this blog post is going to go (the intro has already gone very differently to what I've been rehearsing in my head the past week), so I suppose I'd better just start writing and we'll see where this goes.

I did make myself a Christmas dress this year. I finished it at about midnight, or a little after, the night before our first family Christmas gathering of the year. I made no Christmas gifts this year - but I did make Christmas outfits! Boy did I make Christmas outfits! 

After more Christmases than I had wanted where it was just my husband and I, this year that all changed. Our house is now much fuller and much more noisy than it used to be - and Christmas was much more exciting! 

This year there was a massive pile of toys under the Christmas tree to be unwrapped Christmas morning. 

This year we had kids (or atleast one kid. . .) singing "Joy to the World" in the kids Church Christmas Program.

This year there were more than two stockings hanging from the mantle (though the kids didn't know about their stockings until Christmas morning, because, ummmm, I didn't finish sewing those until Christmas eve - just in time for Santa Clause to fill them)

This year was a whole lot more hectic than last year - and contained a whole lot of answered prayers.

We don't know how long these kiddos will be with us, but we love them - and as I regularly tell our eldest whenever he asks - they'll have a home here as long as they need it. Be that only a little while, or forever.

This year the kids Christmas outfits were all done with days (or even a whole week in one instance!) to spare before they were needed, it was only mine that was done truly last minute - and my incredibly sloppy back zipper application is a testament to that.

Of course, the Christmas outfits were all planned months in advance! I started day dreaming about them probably in September or October (once I'd wrapped my head around the "instant family" situation in our lives and started thinking about the months to come).

I quickly decided that the dresses would be green - because our little lady would look darling in green - and they would be accented with some sort of festive plaid - so the boys could have matching plaid shirts. 

With that in mind, I picked up 4 yards of a Christmas-y cotton and metallic plaid from Hobby Lobby. Then I went to my fabric stash to pick out a solid green green fancy dress fabric to pair it with. After considering multiple options, I finally settled on the remainder of the green taffeta I thrifted years ago and used for the vests my brothers wore in my wedding and one of my sister's prom dresses. It was about time I used this beautiful fabric to make something for myself! 

Now all that was left was to pick a design!

As far as that went, lots of different ideas flitted around in my mind, but I wasn't in love with any of them until I noticed a 1950's style dress on the cover of an audiobook I was listening to.

That wide band framing a bateau neckline, the 3/4 length sleeves, and full skirt - yes! That was exactly what my Christmas dress should be! And I had the perfect pattern for it already in my stash - Butterick 6129.

View C looked like it would be exactly what I was wanting if I made a couple small adjustments.

Slightly longer sleeves, slightly fuller skirt, and slightly lower neckline. Totally doable!

I cut the dress out of green taffeta being careful to add my sleeve length and skirt fullness. Then I used an old flannel sheet to line the whole thing - my flannel house dresses (and this Christmas dress from a couple years ago) are my very favorite things to wear in the winter, so I decided to incorporate that coziness into this year's fancier Christmas Dress. (Honestly, I was tempted to skip the fancy dress this year and make my Christmas Dress out of the green herringbone flannel in the fabric photo a few pictures back, but alas, Joann's did not have enough yardage for me to be able to do that - probably a good thing since using what I already had saved me money.)

I used the thinner, more worn sections of this worn-out flannel sheet to line the parts of the dress that I specifically did not want to be bulky - such as the sleeves.

As for that neckline I wanted to lower, well I made that cut late one night as I was sewing the dress - and I think I was a little over-zealous.

This was not supposed to be an off-the-shoulder dress. Ooops.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I finished my Christmas dress some time after midnight, the night before I had planned to wear it. (And these days with little ones in the house who get up first thing in the morning, me staying up past 10 pm - or even until 10 pm - is quite a feat!) I tried it on. And I hated the neckline. Oh well, too late to fix it now. I hung the dress up and went to bed.

I put on the dress the next morning, and paired it with the red bow belt I made to go with my red scalloped dress a few years back (I'd intended to make a matching plaid belt, but I ran out of time and wanted sleep, lol) I didn't hate it as much as I had the night before (Amazing what a few hours of sleep can do!), but I was still rather insecure about my bare shoulders. So I threw on a black cardigan to wear over it for church. 

That afternoon at our family Christmas gathering however, I decided to remove the cardigan and see what happened - and you know what? The more I wore the dress, the more I liked it!

Off-the-shoulder still wouldn't be my first choice, but I love how elegant this dress feels! 

Honestly, I'm just happy I managed to make myself a Christmas Dress this year - off-the-shoulder neckline, recycled belt, sloppy zipper, and all!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I will try not to let another 5 months pass before I post again, but no promises. My life certainly got busier in 2024, and I can't wait to see what 2025 brings!