This whole long process of finding an apartment, on top of the usually cycle of do laundry fold laundry occasionally put away laundry, sweep vacuum mop, sweep vacuum mop, more laundry, cook clean up, sweep vacuum mop, more laundry etc…..meant I really really needed some projects with actual beginnings, middles and ends.

Lily’s birthday always lends itself to a fit of sewing. Usually I take on like 10 projects and finish maybe 5. This time, I sort of came out of the fog of apartment hunting, etc, and realized I needed to think about lily’s birthday like oh 2 weeks ago. I decided I would whip her out an adorable reversible hat, largely because my friend leah had made her one in an afternoon when we were visiting and so I had seen it done and saw that it was pretty easy. Then I had ONE other idea. really, no problem.

A whole week ago I thought, um maybe I should go fabric shopping now. It’s 7 days until Lily’s birthday so now is the time for fabric shopping

I fell in love love love with this brown fabric with pink polka dots. and then, um this pink fabric with BROWN polka dots, what a great idea for a reversible hat…and um it was in the section that requires buying 2 yards minimum, so well, 4 yards of fabric came home with me. actually 6 yards becasue there was this adorable cotton eyelet fabric on sale for 1.99 yard, only 2 yards left of it and it was screaming, cute dress cute dress.

opps.

so two projects turned into, 2 reversible hats, a dress, (downloaded a FREE pattern for an easy sweet dress) and the other project- a baby doll sling. Then it also became a second dress of the same pattern but reversible this time (using said adorable eyelet fabric) which required going back to the fabric store for another coordinating fabric (because I also forgot to buy thread. how convenient.)  Lily got to pick the fabric since I had to drag the kdis along for the 2cd trip so though she doesn’t know what its for, she picked some adorable pink fabric.

and oh my gosh people, the patterns I choose were so simple that these dress and coordinating baby sling and coordingating reversible hats are SO GORGEOUS. I even ahd a sewing date with my friend Leah for the more  complicated reversible dress. She was very helpful, and if any of you looked at the dress, you could probably pick out the parts she did and the parts I did

Tonight I even figured out how to sew straps into the reversible hat so that I could tie it on her on windy days and I did it all by myself made the straps sewed them on correctly the whole thing. I am so proud of me ha ha ha ha ha ha. but seriously, wait until my dear girl opens her gifts and I take 1000 pictures of her in these things.

so as much as my sewing has both improved and very much not improved it feels so very good to have completed these projects, to have made lily some really lovely clothes and to feel like something in my life had a start middle and finish. It is very gratifying.

now if you will excuse me, I have to clean up the sewing mess, swap the laundry and clean the kitchen….

(did I mention the new apt will have a room the sewing machine can stay set up in? I’m delirious with joy).