It’s been a funny week here. School was closed on Monday and Tuesday because of the snow, so we had a nice extended weekend. The Christmas decorations are up (complete with 80s-style foil ceiling decorations everywhere!); we built our first family snowman and even got around to baking some gingerbread. Trying to squeeze an entire week into three days since Wednesday hasn’t been so fun though!
When the girls went back to school on Wednesday I thought I’d better get their Christmas party outfits finished for next week. They’ve got a party at their dojo and then the day after at school too. I bought some gold sequin last Christmas, with the intention of making elasticated skirts for last year’s parties. As always seems to happen, time got away with me and the fabric has been hanging around ever since. But, what says Christmas party more than crazy gold sequins?!

Christmas Party Shorts
Back in the spring, I optimistically made a couple of pairs of shorts each for the girls using Simplicity 1144. They were incredibly fast and easy to make and fit perfectly. It seemed like a good pattern to revisit now. Obviously they’re going to wear tights underneath, I’m not completely crazy.
The last shorts I made with Simplicity 1144 were the sizes for the girls ages. As they fit perfectly, I didn’t remeasure either of them and just went with the next size up. The sequin fabric is pretty scratchy and see-through, so I wanted to line both pairs of shorts with some grey fabric. All I did to line them was cut the same pieces again in the grey fabric. I slipped the grey shorts inside the gold shorts (wrong sides together) and sewed them together at the hems and also around the waistband. There might have been a better way to do that, but it achieved what I wanted. Originally I was going to use the bias binding left from my Christmas dress around the hems but I didn’t quite have enough for both.

Thankfully both pairs of shorts fit the girls perfectly. They were fairly impressed once I’d explained (about three times) that they’ll be wearing them with tights or leggings.
I think that all my Christmas sewing finished for this year now. I do have a gift to blog about, but not until it has been received!