Christmas Outfits of 2020

The tradition of family Christmas outfits continued this year. We took to the beach in Apollo Bay in our matching Christmas print to celebrate together. We hope you had a safe and happy festive period with your loved ones.

Jocelyn Proust Christmas Wombats

This year we went for a modern Australian print by Jocelyn Proust. The cute Australiana print features grey wombats in red Christmas hats on a pale blue background.

We found the fabric at a Boxing Day sale last year (with luckily enough fabric left on the roll!). The blue background and Australiana print were perfect, as it was different from the traditional red themed fabric from previous years. We didn’t plan what patterns we were going to make when we purchased the fabric but still managed to fit our five garments out of 12.5 metres.

Lauren and Erin

This year we made two of our favourite patterns we discovered in 2020. Lauren was inspired by the ruffled version of the Flora Dress we had made recently and it was a great sleeveless option for a warm Australian Christmas Day. Erin made a dress version of the Schultz Apparel Ottilia Top adding a gathered skirt to the originally waisted top.

Robyn and David

For Dad’s shirt, we used McCalls 6044. We have recently changed the men’s shirt pattern we used for Dad, and we are really happy with the change. This pattern has more shape through the body, curved hem and front placket detail.

Earlier in the year, we made Mum and blue Kingfisher version of Vogue 1511 with the long sleeves. As it is one of her favourite dresses to wear, we decided to use the pattern to make a short sleeve version fit for summer.

James and Erin

James dove into the matching family Christmas outfits and took on the challenge of making his own shirt! This is his third garment having only made 2 pairs of pyjama shorts before tackling his first collared McCalls 6044 shirt.

Photography Notes of Christmas Outfits

Photographer: James Christie
Dress Fabric: Christmas Wombats by Jocelyn Proust
Patterns:
Erin – Schultz Apparel Ottilia Top hacked into a dress
Lauren – By Hand London Flora Dress
Robyn – Vogue 1511
David and James – McCalls 6044
Headbands: Lauren J Ritchie Millinery

Liberty Orchard Garden from Fabric Hoarders - Flora Dress - Two Sewing Sisters

Liberty Orchard Garden from Fabric Hoarders Flora Dress

Summer dresses are here!  Which means for us a great urge to sew pretty floral cotton dresses.  This project ticked all of those boxes.  Using a floral print Liberty Cotton from Fabric Hoarders we created a variation of the By Hand London Flora Dress.   

Liberty Orchard Garden from Fabric Hoarders

Located in a town on the Murray River in North Victoria, Fabric Hoarders is an independent fabrics store. They have a great selection of cotton and liberty fabrics in their online store. We have partnered with Fabric Hoarders and its business owner Leanne to share with you some of their wonderful fabrics.

This beautiful print is the blue colour way of the Orchard Garden design by Liberty. It is a cotton fabric with an off white background and blue floral repeated design.

There is a wide range of iconic Libery Fabrics on the Fabric Hoarders website and is purchased in 25cm increments.

Flora Dress in Liberty Cotton

The Flora Dress is a lovely pattern from By Hand London – it has a fitted bodice with waist and bust darts. There are two bodice varations, we chose to make the tank style with high neck and thin shoulder straps

Flora comes with two skirt options either a shaped circled or pleated option. We opted for a different style again and created a gathered skirt with darts.

Construction

Adding the shoulder ruffle

To create the ruffle cut a rectangle piece that is twice the length of the strap x 10cm wide (4cm wide ruffle + 1cm seam allowance, doubled)

Press the ruffle in half length ways

Finish the ends of the ruffle by putting right sides together and stitching across the ends

Turn right side out

Create gathering stitch close to the raw edge

Prepare the strap by pressing in half then the edges into the middle

Using the gathering stitch pull the ruffle up so the ends sit 1.5cm from the raw end of the strap (so they don’t get caught up in the bodice)

Tack the ruffle into place

Fold the strap in half, sandwiching the ruffle

Top stitch

The strap is finished and ready to be inserted into the bodice as shown in the instructions

Skirt

We created the skirt by starting with two rectangles, the width of the fabric and 65cm long. Using darts along with gathers creates a more bell shaped skirt and reduces the bulk around the waist. The darts should sit from the waist to the hip, this is approximately 25cm, for this skirt we did a series of smaller darts spread out across the skirt

Finished Liberty Flora

Pattern placement was key.  You will see us talk about pattern placement and pattern matching alot.  It is steps like making sure that if you have a dominate pattern that it is placed well on the body, lined up down the centre front  or on a skirt that the pattern lines up as is runs around the body.  

Making this floral dress in the Liberty print was no expection.  If you watch the video you will see how Erin folded the fabric when she was cutting it.  At first you might say it is not the most efficent way of cutting the piece but when you see the pattern lined up down the center front of the bodice you can then understand why this particular placement.  

Take pattern placement into consideration when select how much fabric you might need and if in doubt check with your fabric supplier how long the repeat is.  Fabric Hoarders have 25cm increments that works very well for a print like this as you can pick the repeat of this fabric with the butterflies being the dominant repeat running down the fabric.  

The Libert Ochard Garden cotton from Fabric Hoarders was lovely to work with.  It was perfect for a style like this, holding well in the bodice darts and enough softeness in the gathers of the skirt and added shoulder detail.  

Photography Notes

Photographer: Lauren Ritchie
Model: Erin Ritchie
Dress Fabric: Liberty Orchard Garden from Fabric Hoarders
Dress Pattern: Flora Dress from By Hand London