Sewing

This is my sewing machine. I've spent a lot of time here lately. Saturday, for instance, I sewed 9 dresses to be costumes for M's dance concert next Saturday. They are made of silk - beautiful fabric with a great drape - but slippery at you know what. So slippery that my machine was having trouble sewing with it - the feed dogs couldn't keep a grip on the fabric, so my seams were a bit puckered.
(For those who don't sew and have absolutely no idea what I just said - a sewing machine's feed dogs are the parts that lift up from under the needle to grab the fabric and move it through the machine at the proper pace. If the fabric doesn't go at the right pace for the stitch and speed you are using, your stitches will be uneven and the tension of the top and bottom threads won't be right and so the finished seam won't lay flat.)


This is what a pile of silk scraps leftover from cutting out 9 dresses looks like. Actually, this is what it looks like after your 4 and 1/2 year old daughter takes your fabric shears and cuts them up into smaller pieces, but you get the idea.


This yellow fabric is actually cut into squares now - it will be 10 skirts.


These are the rainbow fairy scarves - we dyed them yesterday. They are silk also - I think they turned out really pretty. Each one is a different pattern of colors....


This is all the rest of the silk we dyed yesterday - blue scarves for the dancers who will be toys, rainbow fairy pants, and autumn fairy dresses (those are the ones I made). I'm really happy with how bright and bold the colors came out. (They are all bunched up in the sink here because I had to rinse the dye out this morning - which I did in the shower with a detachable nozzle head - and they are now waiting to be washed. Of course, I forgot to bring home the special soap I need to use, so they will have to be washed after I run out this afternoon.)


My hands hurt. But it is very rewarding to take a pile of fabrics and turn them into something beautiful. I can't wait to see the dancers in them! And I will try to take pictures of the finished products....

Monday, Monday

So, M. was fine today. It always amazes me how quickly she can bounce back from illness. She is rarely down for more than 24 hours. Yesterday, she took a 3 1/2 hour nap in the afternoon and woke up quite chipper. She slept well last night, and today you could hardly tell she'd been sick at all. Now as long as no one else in the family gets sick, we are in good shape.
I should say, as long as no one else gets the puking sick, we are in good shape, as I am coming down with a respiratory bug. Which wouldn't be bad if it didn't mean my asthma was kicking in again. So, I have a call in for an appointment at my pulmonologist this week. I don't want to let this go and be sick for weeks like I was at one point last fall - I am trying to learn to take care of myself.
On the sewing front, I made M.'s belt - so now we will see if she will wear it. I made it from a European pattern, so it was in centimeters and I had to convert to inches - and I messed up and made the seam allowances 1/8 of an inch to narrow. Which doesn't seem like much, except that the belt is supposed to be 1 inch wide and it is now 1 and 1/4 inches wide. So, we will see if M. likes and will wear it. If not, well, I think I spent a grand total of $2 on it - so, no worries. And I will pay more attention to my math when converting in the future. 1 cm is more like 3/8 inch - not 1/4....
Off to bed now.

Saturday Night

So, I have to say that the sound of my 2 girls snoring in rhythm is one of the sweetest sounds in the universe. C. stirred just as M. was ready to go to sleep, and I had already promised M. to sit in her room until she went to sleep tonight, so I rocked C. sitting on the end of M.'s bed - and they were both out in about 3 minutes. So sweet.
I went fabric shopping today. Many of the local stores were having President's Day sales - so the girls and I hit 3 stores looking for fabrics for spring/summer clothes. I got a bit stir-crazy this last week and decided that since it won't stop snowing here - I need to do something to bring on spring. So, I have fabric for:

-a new fabric purse for me.
-a skirt for me (blue tiny floral print.)
-matching pink capri pants and white/pink print tops for the girls
-purple print for sundresses for the girls
-one pair blue and one pair purple pajama pants for M., maybe for C. (not sure if there will be enough so I may need different fabric for C.)
-a purple belt for M. (need to make this first - she is so skinny that her pants are always falling down. Hopefully a belt will help - at least with the pants that have belt loops..... :) )
-knit fabric to make pajama tops for summer (have to brag that this was an insanely good deal - $.99 a yard and it takes just over a yard for one top for each girl - )

I think that is everything. I have figured out how to set up my new cutting table that I got for Christmas - it's a fold down table that is about waist high and about 4 ft. by 6 ft. when set up. I can spread out fabric and patterns to cut it out without crawling on the floor, getting "help" from the girls, and worrying about pins getting stuck in little feet. Now I just have to keep the pins in the pin cushion on the table. I also have a new gigantic cutting mat to go on top of it - so I can use my rotary cutter - and again, keep it out of little hands. (If you don't sew and haven't a clue what a rotary cutter is, think a small pizza cutter with an incredibly sharp blade used to cut fabric. Much faster than scissors for cutting things out fabric.)

So, we may have snow until July at this point - but I don't care. I will be hiding in my basement sewing/play room and dreaming of warmer days until they come (in between all the other stuff I have to do....)
(And we won't have snow until July - it just feels like it right now)

C's new tricks

We have a climber. Some shots from the last 24 hours.....

First, it was just fun to climb up on her sister's chair. She would sit there on her knees and laugh and smile. Cute, right? (Until she stands up and my heart stops beating for a second...)
Then she figured out how to go from the chair to the coffee table. The keyboard is an old one that stopped working, so we cut the cord off and made it M's when M was about 2 or so. C. now loves to "type" on it....

Looking to see if she has an audience. And waiting for Mom or Dad to come get her down.
Finally, this isn't the best picture, but didn't these shoes for C. turn out cute? I made them yesterday and I think they turned out pretty neat. They are made of a rosy-pink wool felt...to keep her toes nice and warm this winter - or at least until she outgrows them!

ETA - a link to the pattern I found for the shoes - in case anyone reading wants to make a pair. They aren't hard to sew, and I used gripper fabric (think what's on the soles of kids footie pajamas) for the sole, to make them non-slip, instead of leather.