My youngest granddaughter is in love with foxes. All kinds of foxes, fox books, fox photos, fox YouTube videos and fox toys. She lives and breathes foxes. In October my lovely daughter-in-law sent me a message, “wouldn’t Greta love this dress? Could you make it for her for Christmas?” There was a photo attached of a little girl’s dress with a fox applique. My reply, “Absolutely! I’m on it.”
Finding the time was a challenge plus there were no patterns. So right after Thanksgiving I dashed to the store and bought fabric. Since my granddaughter loves blue, I decided on a blue sparkle denim for the dress, orange fleece with black velveteen for legs and white fur for the face, tummy and tip of the tail.
I sketched a rough drawing of a fox on my computer and printed it, jiggly lines and all. Shaped it up with felt pen, created pattern pieces and plunged in. Here are some of the photos of the process.
Jiggly rough sketch.
I told you it was rough, you probably didn’t think this rough, but this is where I started.
Fox smoothed out and pattern pieces for the three fabrics were created.
It’s quite amazing how smoothing the lines with felt pen and then making a pattern piece for each color shows there is promise in this fox.
Here are the fabrics I chose to make this little dress.
You can see this fox will be fuzzy and soft and close to the right colors of a red fox.
The fox appliqued onto the dress piece.
The blue denim dress with one fox appliqued onto it.
Since I couldn’t find a black or orange or white tee-shirt with 3/4 length or long sleeves in a size six and the only simple tee was in hot pink, I added bright pink facings, and appliqued pink flowers with orange centers by the foxes feet. On the bodice I added a bright pink butterfly with a fuzzy orange body. I also found a three pack of leggings any one of them would be adorable with the dress. I was set for Christmas.
I was sure she would love it. But then I knew she also needed a hand-made doll wearing the matching dress, something I had done for each of my daughters and my oldest granddaughter. It was one week before Christmas. It is year-end at work. The pressure was on. My priorities shifted, no Facebook, no blogging, just make the doll and dress, in the evenings, after dinner.
Once I knew I had to do it, I wouldn’t sleep if I didn’t get started. As it turned out, I didn’t sleep, much.
Cheers,
Shez
Totally Random Shez 
Terrific! I bet she loves it. : )
Thank you. I hope so. 😉
This is amazing – I bet she will never take it off! xxx
Thank you so much. Christmas is always so exciting for kids, it can be hard to tell. My fingers are crossed.
Shez, I loved this post! You are so creative. Great dress, great fox ( I didn’t even know little girls could like foxes so much. Very original! but what I liked best about this post was the love I felt for your granddaughter. What a gift of love. Beautiful dress in more ways than one : )
Nareen, thank you so much. Nothing makes me happier than making things for my special people. I would never have thought of it, but my daughter-in-law tipped me off.