Monday, April 6, 2015

Springtime Fabulous

I have the privilege of having the fabulous Kelley Fantasma of Fantasma Imagery as my sister.  We love to work together and our kids are gorgeous, so we made a springtime/Easter fashion shoot happen this year.  She did, as usual, an AMAZING job capturing these cuties.  

The patterns:
For the boys, I used Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop's Little Gentleman Pants and Vest and Little Gentleman Tie.   Amy Hindman writes designs fantastic patterns for slim kids.  My sister and frequently struggle to find pants that our boys don't swim in.  These fit the bill perfectly, and were a snap to put together.  I didn't make their shirts this time, but I have also used Peek-a-Boo's oxford shirt pattern many times, and it's pretty great.  We just happened to be able to pick up these white shirts for next to nothing at Goodwill.  Ditto for Baby Guy's suit.  It was super cheap at the thrift store is is basically identical to the ones I made for the bigger boys.  If I had it to over again, I might size up on my older son's outfit.  He's kind of between sizes, and I went with smaller instead of larger, but it was fine.





The fabric for the boys is cotton blend suiting I found in the value section at Hancock Fabrics.  For the ties, I used what little scrap satin that was left after the girls' dresses (more on that in a minute).  I did narrow them pretty significantly, as we were going for more of a skinny tie than the pattern calls for.  And I was nearly out of fabric.


Aren't they handsome?  I love these guys.

I will fully admit to not spending nearly as much time on the boys' outfits as on the girls.  My vision for the whole thing was based more upon the girls' dresses.  The boys suits turned out nicely though, and they felt so grown up and good looking in them.

For the Girls
The pattern: Violette Field Threads Chloe in the tea length version.  I modified them slightly by adding length to the sashes and sewing the skirt lining and the skirt layers together with the bodice sandwiched in between, so there would be no scratchy edges where the skirt attaches.
The fabric: Oh, my.  This was a pain.  The dress requires four different fabrics (satin/silk/whatever for the bodice and skirt lining), chiffon, tulle, and netting.  When I imagined this shoot, I wanted the colors to be a gradient of the same color.  I did not realize that this is next to impossible.  Everywhere I looked, I could find all but one or two of the TWELVE different fabrics I needed.  At one point, I found what I needed at one store, but four of the bolts were a yard or more short of what I needed.  I left that day without buying anything.  I ended up with the shades of pink/purple because it was the closest I could get to that.  Most are from the Casa Collection at JoAnn Fabrics, with the orchid colored dupioni as the exception.  I got that one at Hancock Fabrics.  The bodices are all slightly different fabrics, too (again with the lack of matches to the tulle and chiffon).  The ballet pink is a glossy satin.  The orchid is poly dupioni.  The dark purple is matte satin.  Three trips to brick-and-mortar stores and countless hours spent looking online, and I finally got it all together, but just barely.
The fabric flowers are out of the leftover chiffon from the dresses.  This tutorial is the basic idea, but I added more petals and gathered them up a bit.  I used this tutorial to make the little veil, except I hot glued it to a metal barrette.  I knew a comb would fall right out of my daughter's silky fine hair.  The barrette made it stay firmly in place.














The dresses are swishy, twirly, delicious princess perfection.  I am so pleased with how well they turned out and how much they loved them.

Side note: It's a great idea to get holiday pics taken before the holiday.  These outfits were also all these wonderful kiddos' Easter clothes.  I rolled into church Easter morning with six gorgeous, perfectly dressed angels (my niece and nephew had slept over the night before), and we left with ripped tulle and multiple chocolate and Dorito stains. Kids will be kids, and that's definitely part of the fun.  I would almost like to do a "trash the dress" shoot of the pale pink one with fingerpaints and chocolate pudding.  But yeah...here's hoping the dry cleaner can get smashed M&M's out of chiffon.
I love these crazies!


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