Projects

So, Emily's been needing some new dresses and skirts to play in, she has a few she's about outgrown. I've been hesitating to put them away because they're her favorite, and then she has a couple that have just had it that are only allowed to be worn around the house. So she needed a few things to wear out and about and to church on Wed. I got ambitious and made her four dresses, two skirts and one pair of shorts. I figured if I'm going to bother cutting one out, I might as well cut out a few more!

 I added the pink ribbon, just to add a little something. I thought it turned out cute!





We went to Jo-Anns and she picked out the purple butterfly material and we bought the jean material. The turquoise I had found on sale for a super good price in the fall and the green was some that I think my mother gave me, as well as the blue for the skirt. The other skirt was a lightweight jean material from a little I had left from another project.

The green dress was a variation. The underarms ended up a little too big, so I had to take them up a little, but the sleeves were cute!

 

For the jean dress, I added some daisy buttons to it, just to brighten it up a little!

 

 

 

While I was at it and had ribbon, I made some hairbows to match some of her dresses and I made little ones for the baby!

 



 

 



The daisy one goes with the jean dress, and the pink one goes with the turquoise dress, (of course they'll go with other outfits, too) the patriotic one was just because I had cute star buttons and red and white ribbon!!

 

 

For the bows I followed the pattern at this blog  http://www.theribbonretreat.com/blog/ribbon-flower-bow.html  .  They were super easy, and I thought they turned out cute. 

Projects

Well, for a while I've been wanting to post projects that I've done, but I couldn't get the picture thing to work very well, and at the other house they were extremely slow to upload.

My latest project was Emily's Easter dress. My mom would often  make us girls Easter dresses and I always remember them fondly. It's difficult to find little girl dresses that are long enough and reasonably priced, so I occasionally make dresses for Emily, usually for church. She needed a new spring dress, so I figured it was a good excuse! I've never made this neckline before, and I was pleased with how it turned out.

Some previous things I've made

I made this dress in Jan.2012. I wanted an easy, cute casual dress that I didn't have to put a zipper in. I found this pattern and have fallen in love with it. I've made it several times. The latest two I added an extra layer at the bottom just because I used alternating material.

This was the patriotic one with an extra layer, it's not a very good picture of it, but it turned out super cute! I also made the boys matching ties. They were from a pattern online, but I wasn't too pleased with how they turned out, the neck part that goes around the neck needs some tweaking.

Here's a better picture. My inspiration for the patriotic one was a dress they had hanging in Jo-Anns with a sundress pattern. I fell in love with it! The bottom three layers were the ruffles, but the bodice was a sundress type bodice, so I just used my pattern (which I preferred) and added the extra layer.

And the Christmas one.

I wanted to make the Christmas one a little more "fun" with four different "fun" patterned material, but I couldn't find four different ones that went very well together, so we just went with two that coordinated well enough. I'm not very good at coordinating fabrics, I don't do well with colors and such unless it absolutely matches.

 

I've also made Emily some pajamas. She prefers nightgowns and I have a hard time finding them a decent length as well. Mom had made her some nightgowns, a spring one and a super cute strawberry shortcake winter one, so I found her pattern and made Emily some more!

I loved the pant set pajamas, and the material is super cute and very lightweight and comfortable looking. I love the rufflies around the feet and the shirt. She only wears it if her nightgowns are in the hamper!

 

The only other project I think I made this year was a pillowcase cross stitch of Cinderella for Emily's birthday. It was a kit and I thought it turned out cute.

That's all I have pictures of, I've done some other sewing things, but haven't taken pictures of them. I haven't done much this year, due to being too busy. I did some crochet projects and my first embroidery project, but I didn't get any pictures of it. I really enjoyed the embroidery. It was a linen kitchen towel with an embroidered poinsettia at the bottom. It turned out pretty, so I gave it to Mom for Christmas.

 





Beginning of School/ First day off

 We started school on August 29, which seems really late to me because we usually start the last week or last partial week of July. So I have been trying to do some extra lessons and such to "catch up" so that we're not doing school until the end of May. I like to finish near the beginning of May, usually just because I start getting ancy to get other things done, and the beach craving sets in about March/April when the weather starts getting warmer. So this past Friday, Sept. 30, we finished our first six weeks!! WOOHOO!! I'm not cramming in lessons, it came out to one extra lesson a week, which was doable, especially since the first few weeks are a lot of review. As a reward we took yesterday off. It was so nice to have a day off. We don't take holidays, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so all our days off are based on what I need to get done, or when I decide to go visit someone, or someone's sick, etc. I found last year, that the kids really enjoy looking forward to having a day off, and since we don't take holidays, they were missing out, because I would plan my schedule and tentatively plan a day off here or there, but not tell them, in case I changed my mind or I was able to fit school in along with the other things. I didn't realize this until towards the end of the year, so they only had like one or two days to look forward to, so I decided this year to try to make them a little more planned. They had a Great day, even though I didn't plan anything special or anything, it was just a day off. L had asked for the trains and track to be brought out a couple weeks before so they could play with it, but I wanted to get their room cleaned and reorganized, so I could get the tub down and leave it down, so we did that Monday morning and they played in their room very happily with the trains and track most of the day. Which made it very nice for me because I was hoping to get some sewing done and I was able to, and even got more done than I had planned!! I needed to make Emily a slip to go under some of her dresses, because it is very difficult to find little girls slips, and when you do it's hard to know what size to buy because they make things so short, so that's been on my sewing list for quite a while, so I was able to get that done. Then Luke only had one pair of summer pajamas and I had put them in the laundry and they were stuck in the laundry for three days (usually I try to wash them and dry them in the same day, so he can wear them again, but I got behind) so I had already decided I was going to make him some more pajama pants. I had two remnants of material that I had picked up somewhere along the way and I thought one of them would be long enough-it was a full yard, but due to the stripes, it wouldn't work for pants, but it would work for shorts. So after looking at them both, it ended up that I would have enough to make Luke shorts and matching shorts for Josiah and Timothy. They turned out cute and I was able to finish all three of them!! Leigh  even gave himself a little less to do. He called his recruiters and did a few of his job emails/application/stuff and then he worked on the church's website. HE's been doing their website since they started, but he's had ideas and such that he's wanted to add, take down, change, etc and just hasn't had the time. He hasn't had the time, or some of the info, to do it, so he took a few hours yesterday and worked on it. He seemed pleased with how it was going. I told Mom he had changed it, but I didn't realize he hadn't put it live yet. So if you read this Mom, it won't look different yet. :)  Anyways, we had a nice, fun, relaxing, yet productive day!!