Navy Blue Dots

 

One of our nieces on the Orr side, Kelsey, is getting married to her Love in just a few weeks!  We are all very excited and praying for beautiful weather for her special day.

We are also having pictures taken the day before – of the entire Orr Clan!  That’s something like 45 people!  We haven’t done this since the twins were babies.  For the big group picture, we ladies thought it would be fun to mark the separate families by choosing specific colors per family.  I ended up going with navy blue for us.  And I loved the idea of polka dots!  Navy polka dot is such a classic fabric, and it will read as a solid (mostly) when we’re bunched in with all the other Orrs.  For the guys it’s easy, we can get navy short sleeve polo-style shirts.

But for me and five girls ranging in age from 16 down to 7!?  Even though I half-heartedly attempted to look online for navy dresses for us – not even matching, just navy colored – I assumed we were going to end up making them. 

Thankfully, Kate and Alix are going to be a big help since they’ve had a lot of sewing experience with crafty things for themselves and their cousins, plus they’ve helped before with skirts and dresses.  And it will be a good opportunity for the little girls to learn some more of the basics.

I have a pretty pattern for Alix, that I will probably use for myself too, and which I can adjust to make more in the lines of this for Kate:

 

I don’t have a picture of Alix’s pattern (I ordered it online a few weeks ago), but this dress is similar to it –  with a different neckline and small sleeves. 

 

For the twins I’m going to try to draft a pattern based on this sweet dress I pinned from Pinterest:

 

Although I don’t have a pattern for the exact dress, I have one similar to it which I think will be a help, and I can take a few of their measurements to accommodate the differences in length for the dress and the sleeve style.

 

For Olivia I found this cute little dress!

 

I love the fabric on it – but I think the navy dots would look sweet in this style, too.  I’ll use a pattern I already have which has the crossover bodice, and then for the skirt I’ll take Olivia’s measurements for length and waist and add extra for gathering.  I definitely will do some white eyelet trim as shown on this dress – I think it is adorable.  And although I love the sash on this dress, I think I will do one slightly longer and a little narrower for Olivia. 

 

When the girls were younger, I usually just used one pattern to make all 5 dresses.  Like these I made a couple of years ago – they were the same style, but I let them choose the fabrics from the same fabric designer.

 

But now that they are a little older, although I might use the same fabric, I try to choose styles of dresses that are more in line with their tastes and personality.

So now it’s just a matter of taking 22 yards of this:

and turning it into some pretty things for my girls!

I’ll keep you posted.

 

Have a great Friday!