Sewing Adventures

A dear friend of mine here decided that she wanted to teach me how to sew. I have a good sewing machine & a SUPER DUPER AWESOME embroidery machine, but I don't know how to use them. She is determined to make me a little sewing gal. Well, turns out, a TON of girls want to learn how to sew but don't know how to get started. So Kiona decided to make a little sewing club for us all. We meet once a week for a few hours & she teaches us the basics & we work on projects together. For January she wanted us to buy a pattern of any kind & she was going to teach us how to read a pattern. I chose a cute apron pattern, thinking it wouldn't be too bad. (I was wrong by the way!) It was HARD for a first project. Everyone else brought pillowcase patterns (they were MUCH smarter than me!) BUT, I'm not one that gives up easily so I went week after week, picking out most of my stitches (because they were backward or inside out, or whatever else wrong you can do) & redoing it all. But I LEARNED! Now I'm not making the same mistakes. And the apron is finished & turned out pretty cute. I'm actually pretty proud of myself. It fits well enough for now. . . it will fit better as soon as I get this baby out of my bulging tummy! ha ha ha. But it makes me happy to look at it. I feel like I accomplished something.

The other sewing thing I've been playing with is my new embroidery machine that Trek bought me for Christmas. I am having SO MUCH FUN playing with it. I'm embroidering anything & everything I can get my hands on. I put my name on my new hand-sewn apron.

I made some chair toppers for our Primary so the kids know where to sit on Sunday. We have 120 kids in our primary, so we have 2 sets of every class! It can get confusing with all those chairs so now the chairs & rows are labeled by class to help out. It makes getting settled on Sunday MUCH easier.

I had my girls go through their closets & bring me any plain t-shirts that I could add a design to. And now their shirts are SUPER CUTE!!

And Bladen is even getting in on the fun. This is his new favorite shirt because it has a "CHOO CHOO" on it. He loves trains!

I finished my apron a week before I had to, so I started a new project that Kiona promised me wasn't very hard. This morning I finished it. We've had a baby carseat for ages & after a while, it's just not as cute as it used to be. Tonight I'm going to wash the carseat really well so it looks shiny & new, & then on top I'm going to put my newest project: the canopy. This was the easiest pattern I've ever made. It's as easy as sewing a pillowcase. I was SO surprised! I bought the vehicle fabric at a fabric store & got the lining fabric out of my pile of old fabric. You basically sew it all into a huge rectangle & then add straps via velcro & VOILA!! You have a fun carseat canopy to keep the germs out, the wind out, & to keep it dark when baby is sleeping. Plus it just makes the plain old carseat cute again. And maybe people will know Craiger is a BOY when they see the cars & airplanes. (I always get annoyed when they call my boys girls & my girls boys!) It definitely has it's flaws, but I'm proud of it. I'm just happy to be learning something again!