There are so many wonderful opportunities for children to wear their holiday outfits, from the hometown Christmas parade to Santa’s lap pictures to church services and Christmas dinner. Some of these events are casual while others require more formal wear. Given enough time, I like to make seasonal garments for my grandchildren to meet more than one of these occasions.
We all know the time saving benefits of starting with ready made fleece or tee shirts. But when I found this monotone smocked Ralph Lauren dress, marked down by 75%, I began to look at ready-to-wear with a broader view. I knew that with the addition of a little red and green hand embroidery, it would make a great Christmas dress for my 5 year old granddaughter.
Personally, I love tone-on-tone embroidery. But the ivory smocking, ivory silk ribbon embroidery and ivory bullions were just lost on this little ivory dress. Unless you viewed the child at her eye level, you would probably not even notice that the dress was smocked.
It took very little time to add red French knots to the centers of the ivory bullion rings and green straight stitches on the silk ribbon stitches. Laurel will look as sweet as the Sugarplum Fairy when she wears this to The Nutcracker next week.
The brown Viyella plaid yoke dress and ivory linen Current Critters bib that I am working on (see earlier Lemonade post) are much better suited for riding her new scooter down the street Christmas Day at her Aunt Rebecca’s house.
Have you embellished any great ready-to-wear? Please tell me about it.
This is my post for White Wednesday at Faded Charm. Check out the other white posts.
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