12 of the best handmade Christmas outfits for girls

Welcome to the Florence Christmas Blog Tour

You may remember the Ziggy Top that I made a couple of months ago, well, Anna from Madeit Patterns has recently launched her new collection, which I was blown away by. The collection is fresh, modern and stylish and I figure more people need to know about it. So I suggested a blog tour, only to discover Anna doesn’t have a blog (what!). I stepped in and offered to host a blog tour for her (bigger WHAT! I’ve never done a blog tour before, oh dear! yikes and double yikes!). You can read more about Anna in Stylo, page 60. If you’ve read my blog before you probably know enough about me.

We chose Florence for the blog tour, Florence is a pattern for a blouse with pretty gathered sleeves, it has two variations on the design, a waterfall frill front or a bow neck detail, perfect for Christmas. It comes in sizes 2 – 10 years.

Me and Anna have been plotting and scheming behind the scenes with 11 talented bloggers we admire and respect. We asked them to think outside the box, underneath the box, throw the box away and come up with a Christmas inspired Florence with wow factor and originality.

Pop back everyday this week to:

• meet the bloggers
• see their creations
• hear about what they thought of the Florence pattern
• read about how they added a Christmas spin

Florence Competition

To encourage the bloggers to go that extra mile when creating their Florence we decided to make the Blog Tour into a competition. Head on over to the Florence Competition page from tomorrow to find out more and see their amazing handy work.

Of course it wouldn’t be right to host a tour without making my own version of Florence. So without further ado I present to you my Florence blouse which become a dress inspired by the magic of Christmas, the cold and the beautiful snow.

How I turned the Florence blouse into a Florence dress and other adjustments I made:

• I shortened the button placket
• Curved the seams at the front to make a yoke
• Added silver bias to trim the frill

• Lengthened the sleeves to incorporate shirring at the cuff

• Added silver flat piping to the back yoke
• Omitted the puff on the sleeve and did a regular set in sleeve

• Used silver bias tape to hem the bottom of the dress and the cuffs
• Angled the silhouette into an A-line

• Added a quirky yellow button hole just on the first button (it’s my little joke, we all know to avoid yellow snow)
  

  If the snow won’t come to Needle and Ted, Needle and Ted must go to the snow.

I decide to turn my Florence into a dress for the simple reason that I didn’t want to make a skirt to go with it. Dresses are so much easier to wear because you have less to think about. I thought I was taking the easy option by not having to make a skirt, but not at all, I had to make 2 Florence dresses before I got the pattern right.

I considered making a white dress, seeing how white is the colour of snow, but I wasn’t brave enough. Scout will be wearing the dress on Christmas day and all I could think about was gravy spillage. So I went for a blue linen and used the reverse side which was is a scrumptious shade of grey (my signature colour) and mixed in a touch of silver to make it sparkle.

When I was 12, in my art lesson we had to make a 3D model out of paper of the inside of a tomato. The whole class made a red tomato, some mixed it with a bit of orange or green but I made a silver and black tomato and got an ‘A’.

My best friend could not believe I got top marks for a black and silver tomato. After all who ever saw a tomato that was black and silver? But that was the moment (she still tells people this story) she realised I was creative.

I thoroughly enjoyed making my Florence dress, I learnt a few new techniques and revelled in challenge to make the blouse into a dress.

Sometimes when I buy a pattern, I buy it for convenience thinking I could have really drafted it myself or adapted an existing pattern. But Florence is certainly not one of those patterns, Anna’s 15 years of experience shines through in the construction of the blouse. Madeit Patterns is now high up on my list of favourite pattern brands.

Silver legs

For added glitz and glimmer (and warmth) I made some silver leggings to wear under the dress. Leggings are just so easy to make, I normally draw round an existing pair and sew them up in a matter of minutes. But I thought I’d try the Love Notions leggings pattern seeing as they are a free pattern on Crafty. And do you know what? They are fab, a great fit and an easy sew. There is even a handy little tip to secure the hem seams with a straight stitch in the seam allowance that I had never thought about.

I don’t think I’ll ever bother drawing around existing leggings again.

Make your own Florence and win a free pattern

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for sticking around, this has been quite a long post (oops! sorry about that). But if you are tempted to make a Florence this Christmas you can use coupon code Tour20 for a 20% discount which applies to all patterns in the Madeit Patterns shop.

If you get your Florence sewn up in time for Christmas please take a photo and post it on Madeit Patterns Facebook Page. At the end of January Anna will choose her favourite to win a free Madeit Pattern of your choice.

Pop back tomorrow for Day 2 of the tour, (don’t worry, I’ll remind you).