Christmas Day Holly Dress

Shrug: Nomads Clothing (blue version) | Holly Dress: Memade (Great British Sewing Bee book; fabric from Hobbycraft) | Heels: ASOS

Yep, another dress using my favourite Great British Sewing Bee book pattern! This is the exact same pattern (the Full Skirted Dress) as the red gingham dress I made about a month ago, but I changed it around a tiny bit by using exposed bias binding on the neckline instead of facings (which always flip up, no matter how much I press them!). I picked up the fabric on a whim in Hobbycraft because I’d been thinking about making a Christmas dress for a while and spotted a few different colours of holly fabric – they had it on a green and a red background too, but I went for the cream background so it wasn’t too over the top. This version is much neater than my gingham one, since I rushed that one a bit (oops), but it’s not my favourite I’ve made (although Ben said it was his, strange how we always disagree on these things!).

I actually ended up wearing the dress on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – we always have a sort of family party on Christmas Eve which includes lots of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins coming round, so I thought I’d “dress up” in something I’d made for the first time. On Christmas Day, I wore it with a new Hell Bunny cardigan (which I’d received off my parents that morning) buttoned up over the top. That cardigan will inevitably feature soon on the blog – I have basically not taken it off since I got it as it’s the perfect length and shape for me and has long sleeves! And they come in different colours…this could be dangerous!

Christmas Day was spent as it usually is for me nowadays, with a little bit of a change this year – my sister and I spend the night together having a “sleepover” in my room with a Christmassy film before going to sleep. When we wake up, we open our stockings together, before heading downstairs to greet the parents, before going into the living room where our “Father Christmas sacks” are, full of presents! Depending on how much time we’ve given ourselves, we all swap presents with each other as well as others from other friends and family members from under the tree, but usually there’s only enough time for some as we have to get started on lunch! My dad and sister go off to the bakery (work on Christmas Day!) to sort out a few things while my mum and I prepare for lunch. This year, my grandparents from my mum’s side came over for lunch with us, providing us with a turkey to go with our chicken (I know…chicken on Christmas Day, ridiculous!!). Normally after lunch we go for a walk, but we were a bit tighter on time this year, so I headed over to Ben’s grandparents – I go over there for a couple of hours, to play with William (who’s nearly 4 now!) and swap presents with them. We then head back to my house where we finish opening presents, and Ben and I swap ours (so many presents apparently!), then we sit down with the grandparents and have turkey sandwiches. Wow, crazy day!

I won’t go through all the presents I received, but I was very lucky again this year! My main present is a trip to London with my sister to see Matilda the Musical – we’re going down in February for a couple of nights. Living up in North Yorkshire, London is a pretty big trip for us, and one we don’t get to do often, so it’s very exciting! We were planning to see the Harry Potter Studios too that weekend, but unfortunately the only day we can visit is the only day it’s completely fully booked – typical! But there are plenty of other things we can do down there anyway, so I’m sure we’ll be fine.