Every year I have to try to make a creative and fun Christmas card.

The kids, of course, need fancy schmancy clothes for the photoshoot, too.  🙂

I went with the traditional reds of Christmas for this photoshoot.

Unfortunately, reds go supersonic on my Nikon D50, so excuse the excessive redness of the RED.

~~~~~ Anya’s oufit ~~~~~

• The skirt

The skirt is made out of a nubby silk that I had other intentions for once upon a time.  I had cut it already in large rectangles, so I had to work around that.  I ended up doing a design that looks like this:

The half circles on the skirt panels have flounces sewn on them.  The flounces had straight edges, as diagramed above.  The flounce pieces are cut on the fold, too.  Once everything was attached, I had to hem all those edges.  Blech!  That was the longest part of making the skirt!

• The shirt(s)

This is a tank top with a long-sleeved mullet-hemmed “shrug” over the top.  She can wear the tank top in the summertime or put another sweater over the top of it.  The sparkly red is a very light and floaty knit, so it needed the heavier knit of the red with hearts to give it some winter warmth.

Anya helped with the rhinestone heart.  I drew out the heart for her and she placed them on the mylar sheet.  So she got to “help”, which was really nice for both of us.  I placed it lower down so it would show with the top shirt over it.

• The bling

I made her this pretty simple necklace with baubles on it.  It was basically just a chain she can put over her head with some random pendants put on it.

~~~~~ Kailan’s oufit ~~~~~

The only part of his outfit I made was the shirt.

I cut out a basic shirt and put a v-neck in it.  The body of the shirt is a nice soft sweatshirt fabric and the black neckline and cuffs are a thinner fleece.  I cut out a neckline on the fold that I could overlap.  You have to overlap and sew the seams at the same time.

Unless you want to use a seam ripper, like I did.

He loves the soft fleece on the neckline.  Nice and comfy!

But FIRST, I had to snazzy it up with a stencil design.  Anya helped me paint it, so it isn’t as even as I normally like the paint to be.  Luckily it is black and you can’t tell.

Next was a welt pocket.  It’s a work in process, and my second one ever.  I think.  I made a practice one first and then did this one.  It definitely isn’t perfect but it works!