I was thinking about making a baby Christmas dress for Granddaughter Lilly and wondering about fabric when this appeared at my door.
A bag full of curtains!
There were four pairs of curtains in the bag, all lined with red fabric. I didn’t take measurements but there was a LOT of fabric in there!
Unpicking
First was the job of unpicking, 
I like to reuse as much as possible so the curtain tape came off first. That will get saved in my haberdashery box for future use.
Then I separated the lining. 
I’ll only be using the printed fabric for this baby Christmas dress and will hardly use even 1 of the curtains. Enough to make a dress each year as baby Lilly grows!
Making the Dress
Then it was time to start making 
the dress. I used a BurdaStyle pattern, 9752 which gives a few different options on style.
Following the instructions I pinned the pattern onto the fabric. There’s a tutorial here for how to read sewing patterns.
I usually find Burda patterns easy 
to follow but the collar on this on really had me stumped. I spent a long time trying to figure it out but after a bit of trial and error and the help of a sewing forum I got there.
I used to have a problem inserting sleeves but have finally mastered that skill!
This is the top half of the 
dress finished ready for attaching the skirt.
The skirt was straight forward with a simple gather around the waist. I’ve used this technique on many baby dresses and will be posting a “how to” tutorial soon. It gives a nice fullness to the skirt and makes sure there’s plenty of room around baby’s hips.
Baby Christmas Dress Finished!
Because of the problems I had with the collar this took me around 8 hrs to make. I did manage to run up a matching bib in that time though. Now Lilly will have this cute baby Christmas outfit to wear over her first festive season!
