Merry Christmas 2025

Happy Holidays!  December is in full swing with the Christmas season upon us.  It feels like ages since I journaled a blog and October 13th seems like a lifetime ago.  The day after I journaled on Lacie's Sporting Fashion Hunting ensemble, I began working on my Christmas gifts. Since then, I've stayed busy each day creating one little gift after the next.  This is not to say that I didn't enjoy Halloween or let November go by without notice.  The 'bers always get their due.  My favorite time of year.

November has always been a quiet time for me.  A time to tuck in and work on projects.  Once I get started, its best to just keep going, and so I did.  The crazy thing was that I had five completely different projects planned and moving from one to the next almost required some rebooting in the creative process since each was so unique.

I enjoyed making each one.

First, Kitty Hudson needed a Christmas dress.  At least this is what I was told.  So, I began hunting on Pinterest for ideas and stumbled upon this illustration of a pattern set called, "For the dancing hours of Holiday".  There it was.  The perfect Christmas dress for Kitty.  The one with little beaded Christmas trees on it.

The unusual thing about this illustration is that the dress is shown with two different sleeves which stumped me.  A flutter sleeve and a wee puff.  I asked Rosemarie Ionker if she'd ever seen such a thing, and she had not, nor had any explanation.  My guess is that they were trying to show a variation of sleeves without completely drawing another model.  In other words, pick one.  That was my take, and it worked for me.  I chose the puffs.

Kitty's silk dress is in a pale pink blush with fully lined cream puff sleeves.

The hem is made with a scalloped edge.

The neckline boasts ruched edge detailing.

And best of all, the three little Christmas trees of amethyst and ombre seed beads nestled in tiny silver sequin cups.  Sage satin bows decorate the base of each tree to match the bow ribbon sash at the drop waist.

The ribbon is a French satin, silky light and pretty.

Kitty's shoes, to match the illustration, were purchased in the 1470 section of Ed's shop, Happily Ever After.

Kitty can now attend Christmas parties and dance the night away on New Year's Eve.  My Emily models.

Eloise, Heather's Little Stella, was in need of something to match her spunky personality, so I took a risk and tried my hand at a Nightmare Before Christmas Sally dress for her.

I did a lot of looking to see what others had done inspired by the theme but gave a go at making my best rendition of Sally's dress as drawn.

It was kind of fun because I never even made a pattern for this.  I just started sewing pieces together and cutting out shapes, stitching them together, repeat and repeat.  I was trying to make the garment the way Sally might have sewn herself a Franken dress.

Each seam was then overstitched with black embroidery thread creating a haphazard Franken stitch.

Light blue stockings were cut up to make her arm socks and stockings.  More black Franken stitches.

A pair of black and white striped socks were made to be worn over the stockings, and I only hoped they'd fit inside the shoes I purchased from an Etsy seller.  It was a bit of a risk and a squeeze, but it all worked out.

I could not find any illustrations with the back of Sally's dress, so I did what any Franken girl would do, and that was my best to have some continuity.  

This was entirely fun to do, not to be repeated, but what an experience!  So different from anything I've tried before.

Eloise got to open one gift early as I truly believe that a girl should be able to wear her Christmas dress all season long.

Prague is happily chewing on a voodoo doll I made for him to go with the voodoo doll dress Eloise got for Halloween from her mum.

I knew I wanted make Eloise a Grinch dress.  Or costume.  I thought long and hard about what to do and decided to once again design outside my very A-type box and try a dress.  I made a little sketch, just one, and that did the trick.  The rest was just making it happen.

Eloise's Grinch jumper is made from a fine pinwale corduroy.  I needed a sturdy fabric to embroider the Grinch face on, and this featherweight corduroy was perfect.

The green mock turtleneck and tights were made from costume jersey with three-way stretch.

The Grinch Santie hat is a red jersey trimmed with cotton batting.  The boots are wool felt edged in the same cotton batting as the hat.

As a child I watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas every year.  So much so, that I almost knew it by heart.  One of the most delightful scenes for me was watching the Grinch make "a quick Santie coat and hat".  He was really quite accomplished if you think about it!

The embroidery of the Grinch face was done in black threads.  The eye shapes were cut from wool felt and irises embroidered over them.

I think the hat came out great.  It's definitely the Grinch's Santie hat!

I had one more thought.  Prague seldom gets the attention he deserves, so I made a little needle felted sawed off antler to tie around his head like the Grinch's dog, Max, wore.

Last year, one of my favorite Ruby Red Fashion Friends dolls was released for the holidays.  The design was by Martha Boers. I wrote to her and asked her about it, and she told me it was so easy that I should give it a go.  So, I did.  A year later.  Everything was easy but the hat.  

If you recall, I'd made a folk Alice from a Gail Wilson doll and included a white rabbit on wheels to accompany her down the rabbit hole.  

The artist that made the rabbit makes many more sweet toys on wheels and one was a Christmas train with additional train cars that all hooked together.  The idea was to make one of Santa's helpers to include with the toys "she made".  I also selected a Christmas Rabbit and a cute little giraffe, both on wheels, to ride in the train cars.  Chosen also for their height so they could be seen in the train cars.  I made sure each would fit inside the cars before ordering them.  The costume would be my version of Martha's on a much smaller scale.

I chose an 8" Maggie Iacono doll to dress as Noelle, Santa's helper.

Her short little dress is of wool felt and edge embroidered in red on the sleeves and helm.  Additional trim has been hand sewn above the embroidered hem

The red collar, which snaps on, is also wool felt edged in green embroidery and decorated with gold beads and tiny gold bells. At the center neck is a green silk ribbon bow.

Her tights and arm socks are red and white striped jersey.

Noelle's elf hat is a green and white striped jersey with a silk drop band that dangles bells.  This was edge embroidered, beaded and belled like the collar and has a bit of the dress hem trim on it as well.,

Her elf booties are green wool felt.  Maggie makes hers with hard leather soles, so I did this for Noelle's.  More bells jingle for the toes.

Such tiny bells do not ring but nonetheless make a magical sound to the ears of good little boys and girls.  

The last gift was a doll I'll call Anja. I wanted to dress one more Gail Wilson doll for my friend and once again try my luck with folk doll dressing.

The real Anja is a child in a book called The Christmas Wish, but this little Anja is a winter child taking her wee reindeer everywhere she goes.

Three photos down you'll see the inspiration for her costume in the girl of the two figurines.  I'd even made a gray hat first, but then it occurred to me that Swedish girls wore red hats like this and Anja was born.

Anja wear's a skirt of while pinwale corduroy.  Wool would have been too thick on this little stuffed body doll.  I did agonize over choice of fabric.  The little jacket is a cashmere suiting wool I had in my stash with brass Nordic buttons.

Her little mittens have a thumb and are made from gray wool felt, as are her boots.

I braided her long thread hair.

And she has one of the artist's adorable reindeers on wheels.

This season of creating was very special for me.  I poured love into each project and while very different in nature, each flowed from one to the other.

Plans are being made for future projects, and I am not done in any way shape or form with the Sporting Fashions book.  Or Miss Eloise!   For now, I'm simply enjoying the month of December, decorating my doll displays and dressing them in Christmas finery and fun.  And watching my favorite Hallmark movies with the appropriate mug of cocoa.

I'll be writing a retrospective of the year towards the end of the month, and you'll find out which was my favorite project was this year.  Until then, Merry Christmas and enjoy this season for every reason you can think of!