Well Christmas down under is generally a very very very hot occasion with tempratures reaching 40 degrees Celsius and higher (though sometimes the world decides to kick you in the teeth and we get wet cold and windy). With that in mind during stash bust last year I made a dress that although usable throughout all summer it does indeed bring to mind the wonder of christmas - in that it is indeed red and white. I give you my version of Vintage Vogues 2961.
I absolutely love this dress!!! It was made fairly quickly - I believe it took an afternoon of non stop sewing fun and required finishing before 12am to count in out stash bust. 
Originally it was meant to be my Elvis dress (see post last year to see fabric). Unfortunately V2961 is not very friendly to stripes and I did not have enough material to be able to line things up (nor did I care enough). The change to the red was simply the first thing on cloth mountain to take my fancy. To be honest I think it was left over from making very fast tabards for a role playing game. A dark blood red colour poplin. The white that I used to line and accent was part of the 75m collection of white cotton we got to make togas for another game. I am slowly working my way through that stuff but I think it is going to take a while.
I think that the white and red complement each other well and the style is very flattering. (I do apologise for all the Mavis modelling photos but I put on a bit of weight this year and thus don't fit to many of my outfits anymore. But I am on my way back down so don't fret). It is technically a 1950's style but it looked great with my 1970s style white sandels for my Christmas party. Maybe I can dig out a photo from then at some point.
One of the benefits of this style is that it can be worn two ways - strapless as shown above or halter as shown here. The halter style however sits much better on a person than it does on Mavis.
So the bodice is boned which I used a real featherweight boning on, so bras is still required for wearing. I will say that the picture on the pattern is not too honest, the skirt does not seem for me to have that real 50's fullness.
In anycase as I said before I do love this dress.