Made By A Fabricista: Christmas Sparkles & Fur, Oh My!

With just a few days to go before Christmas, I knew my final Fabric Mart make of 2021 needed to be fancy Christmas dresses for my daughters! Ignoring all the dire warnings from sewists on the Internet, I bravely selected some cranberry sequined stretch velvet, panther black polyester faux fur, and polyester stretch lining. And then I crossed my fingers and hoped I wouldn't have serious regrets!

Using the Peony Patterns Periwinkle Dress, I created the girls' dresses first. I love the statement sleeves on this knit dress, and thought it would showcase the sequins perfectly! To minimize scratchiness on the inside, I lined the dress bodice and sleeves with some knit lining from my stash. I also cut the sleeve cuff in half lengthways so that it could be lined as well. I did try to remove some of the sequins from the seams, but laziness ultimately won the day, and after it was completed, I sealed the exposed armscye and waist seams (the side seams are enclosed in the lining) with some knit SewKeysE Tape.

Cutting and sewing the sequin fabric wasn't the worst thing ever. Though I will likely find sequins in my sewing room until the end of time! I cut the fabric with both rotary cutter and scissors, and used a size 90 universal needle. Depending on the fabric, you may find a microtex needle a better option.

To finish off the look, I decided to create a fur layer using the Oliver+S Red Riding Hood cape. Like sequins, fur is also messy, but the coziness of this fabric made up for that! The cape was fairly easy to sew up, though the fabric choice made it a lot more time consuming than I had expected.

Fur has a "nap" on it - this means the fabric texture has an obvious direction to it. Because of this, it's critical that you cut all your pattern pieces the same direction, following the "grain" arrow on the templates.

Since the fur has a thick pile, I found it more effective to sew it with a slightly longer stitch length (3mm). I used a universal needle (size 80), though I think a microtex would have been better as the universal wasn't ideal with the woven lining.

Seeing the huge smiles on my daughters' faces when I showed them their new dresses and capes made this project absolutely worth it!

Thanks for reading along today. I hope you have a very happy (and sparkly!) holiday too!