School Dresses Done!

It's hard to believe with the temp here at 103 today, but school is indeed just around the corner.  I've loved the last few weeks spent with the granddaughters visiting here.  One of the agenda items we managed to finish over a week before school started was the traditional Grandma-made school dresses. We've had several ideas over the summer, but when it came time to actually cut and sew, there were a few surprises.

Early in the summer, Miss V picked out a dress pattern that took two different cotton fabrics.  She recently went with me to see my Mom, and we made our yearly stop at Needle Nook Fabrics in Wichita.  She fell in love with a knit that has a white background and two pinks in what I think looks like a cheetah print.  All I had to do when I got home with her was to figure out which of the patterns we already owned to make up.  We chose Kwik Sew 3959.  Since this is the south, short sleeves were in order!  The dress is just a simple A-line and the Medium fit her to a T!  I think this is the first time I haven't had to alter something for her.  To make it a little more schnazy I used double fold elastic around the neck and sleeves, but not just any double fold elastic--it was white and had small hologram circles maybe 1/4" in diameter on the "good" side.  Her eyes lit up like Christmas trees when she saw it on her dress.  Dress #1 done -- check!

Early in the summer the twins told me they wanted watermelon fabric.  I bought some with some cute chevron stripes to match the colors of the melons and made what I thought would be Miss K's dress.  It was too big for her.  It was too big for Miss E as well, so back to the drawing board.  While Misses K & E are starting kindergarten, they are on the petite side, and I mean really petite.  I had to dig through my stash of little girl patterns and found different dresses to do for them as one wears and size 2 and the other a size 3.  Miss K got well loved stash fabric with an off-white background and tiny little flowers of pink, lavendar and blue.  I used matching blue baby rick rack around the neck and about 2" above the hem to trim her dress.  She got really excited about the fact that her dress has a zipper in the back, which Miss E can unzip for her when they need to change.  She loved it.  Miss E got well loved stash fabric with a yellow background and small flowers of pink and red.  Her gathered skirt part of the dress was trimmed down the front in the center and on each side with red midi-braid.  The top is peasant style and she can just slip it over her head.  She loved it.  Dresses #2 & #3 done -- check!

I wonder what I will do for Mr. O when he starts kindergarten in about five years.

Getting Organized

I got really frustrated the other day--I wanted to sew up a new top pattern and couldn't find the knit fabric I wanted to use.  It's not surprising, but quite irritating, to be sure.  Why isn't it surprising--I have way too much fabric and I just didn't know where things were.  This incident made me finally do something about it, though, and that's the good news!

It is important to preface the rest of this blog with the fact that I've been actively sewing for 45 years now.  Geesh, that makes me sound old!  Of course I'm not, though.  Being the fabric-holic I am, that means I have fabric around that I got when I started sewing or with a decade or so after, for sure!  I've already stated that I've made things for the grands with fabric I got for their Mom and Aunt, so you get the picture.  Actually, unless you sew, you probably don't.  I could insulate a house with the amount I have, and there are very few things that I'm not interested in using anymore.  Other things I bought for when I retire, which is getting closer, by the way.

My big accomplishment over the last week has been to actually take out, measure, snip off a piece for the notebook and catalogue ten BIG bins of the stuff.  I've sorted it into categories like spring/summer knits and pant weight fabric.  Each bin has a page or three of fabric swatches with the specific yardage and any other information I thought was pertinent.  Each bin is numbered and the notebook where all the information resides now lets me see where specific pieces are in the stash.  The bad news is that there's lots more to go through--haven't even started on the quilting fabric yet.  Sigh.