Well, it was a great and busy Thanksgiving weekend.  Our home is the most central to all participants, so we hosted my family, Christian’s mom and my sister’s husband’s parents for a Thanksgiving feast.  My talents lie in the sewing/crafting room and not in the kitchen, so my dear husband whipped up an excellent meal and we enjoyed it with some excellent people.

Last year when we hosted Thanksgiving I was 9 months pregnant and due the following week, so I was lax about fall decor and my table setting.  It was a hodge-podge mess and I vowed things would be different this year.  I shared a couple things I created previously and now here is the rest…

For my table I wanted something simple and fall time, harvest-y.  I saw some large felt leaves on Pinterest and I was hooked!  I got some 72″ craft felt from Joann and cut out some giant leaves.  I used the custom shape tool in Photoshop to create my leaf pattern and enlarged it to the size I wanted.  Martha Stewart has a leaf shape pattern you could use too, but I wasn’t using a photocopier, just my computer and printer and I couldn’t enlarge the template without it getting all pixelated.  If you are more adventurous than me you probably could sketch out your leaf shape and just eyeball it, but that terrifies me.  I am a nut and like everything all symmetrical.

For the rest of my table decor I just used my red plates, which always spice up a table, some new green bowls (for our tasty lobster bisque) and the napkins that I made.

I love this fabric for my Thanksgiving napkins.  It is a large scale leaf print on a brown background.  I thought they were perfect for the look I was going for.  (I also had enough fabric left over to make a few trivets for all the yummy casseroles.)

And finally, for my centerpiece I found this stalk of wheat at Publix while getting all our food for the holiday and thought it would be the perfect touch.  I put it into an old fashioned milk jug and scattered some on the table as well.  I then tucked a few mason jars among the wheat and put in some tea lights.  My original plan was to wrap them in lace, but after getting the table all set I realized that wasn’t the right look.  I left them plain and that was definitely the right choice.

I was really happy with the finished product.  A simple tablescape but soooo much better than last year!

My other big Thanksgiving project was making the girls their dresses.  A million years ago (it seems) a friend posted a cute holiday dress on Pinterest and I had the brainwave of making the dress reversible with a holiday design on one side and a different holiday design on the other.

I don’t have an embroidery machine, but I found tons of cute iron-on patches that some folks make on Etsy.  I saw an adorable little turkey and the same lady made Christmas trees as well.  I purchased the patches for both girls and set about making my reversible dresses.

The Thanksgiving side is a dark green with the little turkey applique, red buttons and yellow, orange and red rickrack as trim.  They turned out so cute and we got lots of compliments on them while we were out and about the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

A couple notes about how I did these:

1. The pattern – For Esther the pattern was easy.  I’ve had this pattern since Dinah was a baby and have used it for several things before.  For Dinah, things got a little dicey.  I am new to drafting patterns so it took me some time, lots of measuring and math, and quite a bit of frustration.  I did figure it out, but after the dress was assembled I noticed a couple things that I would want to fix.  Notably the width the shoulders…it is just a leeetle too big there and kept slipping down on Sunday. It seemed to fit better on Thursday, so I wonder if it shrunk up a bit more in the wash or maybe she grew that much in 3 days.  I’d believe it.

2. Appliques and trim - For my trim I used my secret weapon, the glue stick, to baste.  I just measured with my hem gauge , dabbed on a bit of glue and stuck it onto the fabric.  Prefect basting with no pins.  After I had everything all basted I straight stitched all the ribbon and rickrack to the dresses.  And because I used a washable glue stick all the sticky residue simply washed away.  I love it!

The appliques I purchased were supposed to be iron-on patches, but for some reason I was not able to get them to stick.  So, I decided just to stitch them on (which I probably would have needed to do anyway). I just so happened to have thread in my stash to match every color on the appliques (thanks again, Grandma!)  I then used the glue stick to baste the appliques to the dress fronts and I hand stitched them on around the edges.  I think I am the only one who can see the stitches and they are nice and secure.

3. The assembly – The pattern instructions had to be altered since the way I wanted to do this was different than how they tell you to do it.  Basically what I did was:

• Attach the appliques to the dress fronts.
• Sew up the side seams of each layer of the dress.
• Attach all the trim.
• Put them together right sides facing and sew the arm and neck holes.
• Clip all corners and curves and turn right side out.
• Press, press, press!
• Turn up the hem of the inside layer and press. (Fold wrong sides together.)
• Turn up the hem of the outside layer (matching the inside layer hem) and press.
• Topstitch the hem 1/8″ away from the edge.
• Sew on buttons and make button holes.*

*Because I wanted bows on the Christmas side I experimented with removable snap on bows and I am very pleased with how those turned out.  (I’ll post more about the Christmas side soon.)  So, in my case I attached the snap and then sewed the button over top of the backside of the snap.

4. The bow – And I just had to make a turkey hair clip for Dinah.  It is two fabric covered buttons that I embroidered and some left over rickrack for tail feathers.  Turned out pretty darn cute!

Here are some action shots…they are both pretty silly after church.

And I wanted to close by saying what I am so thankful for: a Savior, a doting husband, precious and healthy children, friends who also happen to be family, our parents who spoil our girls, our home, our church and Georgia beating Georgia Tech.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday and found many things for which to be thankful!

Next up: Christmas!  So much sewing and crafting to do…my favorite time of year!