Raspberry Nightie

I cranked out a swishy yellow nightie for the growing girl.

The flowers are just so pretty on this vintage fabric from my stash. I used a size 5 pattern and just eyeballed some width and length. When I had her slip it over her head before I put the finishing sems in, we tore the armscye a bit. I'm afraid the vintage fabric might be a bit fragile. I topstitched a patch over the tear.

I did actually make the nightie too wide, so I put a pleat in the front neckline. Sewing over it with rick rack is a bit homemade-y looking, but I knew the fancier the trims, the more Phoebe would love it.

Well, it is pretty and she loves it! And raspberries. Keeping up with the bramble is a twice-a-day job right now, and the black raspberries are coming in, too. One of the fun parts of summer!

An Easy Calico Dress

 I made Genevieve a first-day-of-preschool green calico dress and then lengthened it as she grew taller and then saved it for the little sister who wore it to literal shreds.

Mending fabric that is shredding due to age or heavy wear is like bailing a leaky boat. I've become a savvy mender by inspecting items carefully to make sure I can truly extend their life with mending. Here the fabric was giving out at the bottom of each tuck and I had already mended a three-corner rip that had torn open again. 

So, the middle of the green dress went in the piece bag, the top was discarded, the buttons put back in the button tin, and Phoebe said sadly, now I don't have a calico dress.  

That is an easy fix!

I had a length of navy calico just barely enough for a Phoebe dress - I almost wrote "little girl" but Phoebe is just not very little anymore (and when you look at little Genevieve wearing the green dress - oh my heart! my little girls!). 

I planned to use the same dress pattern as the green calico, but apparently I had gotten rid of it at some point. I used a Style pattern a neighbor gave me when she cleaned out her sewing stuff. I added some rick rack and juicy red buttons and that is a very smart summer dress. 

Phoebe has been helping me set up garden beds and plantings all week long as she quarantines for COVID reasons. She has a pepper plant named Rosalind now. She gets to read books with her pasta and pesto and watercress lunch.  A good week to be at home wearing an easy breezy calico dress!

Mittens Yet

Last fall, I made Phoebe nice black felted wool mittens from an old sweater. I even placed the cuffs on the ribbing so that they hugged her wrists. She ignored the mittens all winter until I finally realized they were just too plain (and sophisticated and New Yorky) for her style. I offered to add hearts to them and then would she wear them? Oh yes, little pink hearts stitched on with blue perle cotton were just the ticket. 

I am still using the Purl Soho mitten pattern. It is so fast and uses just scraps of warm fabric! I can't justify knitting mittens again when these fleece ones are warm, fast, and economical. Plus, mittens are easy to lose, for anybody, not just kids, so I'm very pleased to have found easy, thrifty replacements. 

I even made myself a pair of leopard print fleece. I added a lining of grey knit cotton because I like very warm hands. 

We are having some spring-like days here and there - once I even put away the sleds and snowpants and stock tank heater from the rain barrel. That drew the attention of the snow gods and we got a not-little snowstorm, indeed we did. Spring, you really bring the drama! I have both my mittens and my barefoot sandals in rotation right now. I love it. 

A Calico Tunic for Phoebe

 Phoebe does really love her leggings, so I bought her a stripey pair as a Christmas stocking stuffer and found some blue calico in my stash to make her a tunic. In fact, all the materials for this tunic were on hand.

I have used this pattern before for Genevieve. 

As I sorted through notions for the tunic, I discovered the most astonishing matching flannel, a scrap I have had in my stash for years and enjoyed looking at.

Look! It matches like the calico and flannel came from the same fabric line in 1970! Different fabrics bought as scraps from different stores, marinating in my stash for years, joined in such happiness. I just love it. Phoebe does too!

Two Blue Dresses

In January, deep in covid-cautiousness, my sister got married. It was a delight to dress up again and celebrate!

Phoebe was the flower girl, although as soon as she said "flower fairy," the title stuck. My sister said we should choose whatever dress we wanted (I have the best sister and she was never, not even for one second, a bridezilla). I had a delicious deep dive on winter flower girl dresses, developing a vision that suited all parties: dressy but not out of regular church-wear, wintry but not black or white, flexible with whatever other colors appeared at the wedding. . . 

I used a simple Prussian blue cotton from my stash. I found a gorgeous net sequin fabric for the overskirt at JoAnn's as well as pink satin to line the bolero. For cold weather, she wears the bolero. For warm weather, it's a sundress! I wanted to give Phoebe as many chances as possible to enjoy wearing her dress, but wanted it to look appropriate in any season. At that time, I could not predict when we would be going out in nice clothes again and I did not want any more nice clothes hanging sadly in our closets, especially the handmade ones. 

 I thought I could just gather two rectangles of the net fabric into a black ribbon and tie the overskirt on at the sides, but it ended up being too heavy so I basted it onto the waistline for the wedding. 

Phoebe and I are both so pleased with this dress! She has indeed worn it in all its iterations since January.

The second blue dress is a school uniform dress. I added some light blue topstitching to liven things up.

It has a deep hem, so I'm planning to let it out as Phoebe gets taller. I love Peter Pan collars and here with the puffed sleeves, it's such a charming retro look. 

I had all the supplies in my stash! When my older kids were starting school, I laid in a supply of fabric that would work for uniforms. Our district currently does uniforms until 6th grade and I think that is just right: let the little kids scramble into a prescribed uniform, let the big kids define their own style as they fledge into adulthood.

Phoebe is really the only child I sew for any more. I feel like I live with three other adults and a child! In fact, Genevieve turned 16 this week, oh my word. Such is the speed of life....

Our Really Big House

 Living in close quarters through a pandemic changes how we think about our houses, doesn't it? I always liked the open floor plan of our first floor - made it easy to supervise little kids, seemed light and open.  But in the pandemic, we realized we didn't have doors to close on spaces when a number of us needed to be on separate screens, on separate Zooms (oh, Zoom, how we hate and need thee). 

My husband and I crunched the numbers and decided to take over the rest of the second floor apartment. When we bought our three-storey house, each floor was an apartment. When Genevieve was a newborn, we renovated the house to add interior stairs and create a first floor apartment for us that included part of the second floor. Over the years, we have gradually nibbled away at the second floor apartment until 2 weeks ago when we swallowed it entirely. 

Glory be, we added another bedroom, a family room, and a bathroom! Now our girls have separate rooms, which is a wonderful development in their relationship. Now I have an actual desk in our family room instead of just a drawer next to the dining room table. 

It feels incredibly luxe to not have to wait for someone else in the bathroom, to have masses of storage in the new bathroom, to have a second fridge in the apartment kitchen (and sink and stove, but the fridge is what I immediately put into use). We even have a second staircase to access our new space. 

It's disorienting, honestly. The first night in the new bedroom, I kept worrying about my babies, spread out all over this huge house. I'm still a little puzzled about how much desk stuff to take up to my desk and how much to leave in the dining room, which I have realized is the nerve center of the house.

We had to acquire some more furniture and organizing things. I did my best to buy second-hand items from local sources. The way I see it, not only is this cost-effective, but better for the planet than manufacturing new (cheaply made) stuff that is shipped from everywhere. But oh my, I am also now experiencing the big-house effect, where I have doubled the bathroom equipment, added more bedroom furniture for Genevieve, and considering how many duplicate desk supplies I need upstairs that are already in use at other desks. We have another air conditioner in a window, too, now, which I recognize as really helpful in our swampy summers, but hate the enlargement of our carbon footprint. Living in small spaces makes us efficient, for sure. 

Little Red Elephant Shirt

We got an interesting bag of hand-me-downs for dress-up from another family when Genevieve and Ben were small. I pulled out a little appliqued skirt for real clothes because it was so charming. 

I am avoiding buying new fabric, even new-to-me, until I really use up some of what I have. So I poked around what I had and came up with this red-striped fabric. It also starred in the Swedish summer pillow. I used the same shirt pattern from Phoebe's anchor shirt (look how little she is!), and just as I was finishing up the facings, I recalled that I had some vintage elephant buttons that my mother-in-law gave me a while back. Oh, how I love matching up disparate things to make something I love! My brain shuts down at the thought of selecting all the notions and fabric and patterns from the universes available on the internet. Truly. Much easier for me and more fascinating creatively if I poke through my own collections to design a garment. 

So I came up with these two little red elephant buttons and sewed them on the front, and I just love them. It's a whole elephant ensemble, with the appliqued elephants on the skirt.

I forgot to take  a picture of the pretty zipper pull on the vintage zipper. It's a nifty little ring. 

The big sister has requested a dress. I am thrilled - she is not into mom-made clothes much anymore. Stay tuned!

Homeschooling

Here I am, now a homeschooler! Thanks, COVID. I mean that both sarcastically and sincerely. I am homeschooling Phoebe and she is a dear little student. Our school district is currently totally virtual, and it just did not make sense for Phoebe to enter kindergarten on a screen with me trying not to chew my arm off beside her.

I am grateful that I have a flexible schedule and some years of parenting under my belt. The skills that I need are not really the skills I gained as a high school English teacher, but rather the skills I learned through parenting: patience, cheerful matter-of-fact firmness, calmness, and capacity to enjoy my child and enter into her world. 

For curriculum, I queried the homeschool parents I know who have taught their children kindergarten. I read some websites in the manner of surveying the landscape. Our state uses the Common Core standards and since we intend for Phoebe to return to in-person schooling in the future, I read those standards and chose curriculum aligned with them. 

We are using:
Explode the Code Book 1

DK Geography, Kindergarten level

some partially used kindergarten math books from a friend in the district because the Argoprep Introducing Math! Kindergarten book I bought is too advanced.  

Daily, Phoebe draws in a journal and writes the date. We go over the days of the week, the months and seasons, and do some counting as we ascertain the date.  I read out loud to her; currently we are devouring the Little House books. We spend about an hour on homeschool every morning.

Then she plays her heart out and talks our ears off the rest of the day. She keenly misses peers as her older siblings are so much older - another reason we want to send her back to in-person school. 

As for Genevieve and Ben, they are doing their virtual school thing with their district-issued iPads. Each class has two Zooms a week and the rest of the work is asynchronous. Fortunately, they can still play their sports because these are outside and can be mostly socially distant. I'm grateful they have that fresh air, exercise, excitement, and teamwork.