On A Clear Day ....and some sketches of Christmas clothes

A few days ago I posted a picture of the view off my deck. On that day it was too cloudy to see "my" mountains. Here they are. As you can see I zoomed in with my camera. They are quite this close to us. They are actually about a 20 mile drive away. What you are seeing is the Cherokee National Forest. The Cherohala Skyway crosses this mountain range.


These are very rough (VERY, VERY ROUGH)sketches of ideas for the kids Christmas outfits.
Little Man is getting a suit from the herringbone, an off white dress shirt, a vest, and a tie. I'm not sure, but I'll probably make the vest from the velvet and the tie from the taffeta.

On Jenna's I'm planning to sew lines of gathering stitches both vertically and horizontally and then gather them slightly. I will sew pearls randomly amongst the puckers. I don't know how this will work, but I think it will look pretty. We'll see. If it doesn't then I'll do something differently. On Kellen's I'm planning to make the bodice and the border around the bottom with velvet that I have sewn vertical tucks. I've never sewn tucks on velvet. We'll see how it looks. I will use my twin needle and tuck making foot to do this.

On Riley's you can see where I made the plan for the embroidered bodice. Her skirt will be velvet.

I've decided to do a panel of smocking on Emory's that isn't shown here. I've started it. I'm going to get the bodices done before I start on the rest. I will probably cut out everything in one fell swoop. That way when I start to sew, I can just sew, sew, sew till I'm finished.
I found brown velvet and lining to complete these outfits. I couldn't find any blue that I like so I'm just going with a little blue trim.