Weekend Projects: Sews Well With Others

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Project Management Proverb

I don't say this very often, but thank goodness it's Monday! I had way too many sewing balls up in the air this holiday weekend! Instead of herding cattle, it felt like I was trying to keep up with a stampede! Amazingly enough, almost all of the cows ended up in the barn somehow...

First, my mother-in-law and her 11-year-old great-granddaughter (Tiffany) were visiting us, and Tiffany wanted to do lots of sewing with me. We started by making this cute sock creature, which Tiffany named Star:

Next, was shopping at Joann's for fabric and a pattern for an outfit. It was quite a mad scramble to get this whole outfit finished by bedtime on Sunday, but somehow we managed. As you'll probably be able to guess, I let her pick the fabric and trim... ;)

The shirt pattern was one of Simplicity's "Project Runway" series. Truthfully, I was not impressed, although it's hard to separate out the details of the pattern from the fact that the fabric was stiff and a bit difficult to work with (maybe it was all that glitter?) and the fact that I was working with a newbie seamstress...

The shorts were also a learning experience for me - learning about junior fashion, that is! The pattern produced elastic waist shorts that sit at your natural waist. Apparently 11-year-olds don't wear shorts at their waists these days. They wear them at their hips - below the belly button!

Tiffany just pushed them down to the place she wanted and said that they were fine, but I felt that having the crotch fall somewhere around her knees did now show off our collective sewing talents to their best advantage. So, I trimmed several inches from the waist and redid the casing around hip level, to produce something that we could both live with.

Finally, a quick catch-up on Ana and Juana. It was supposed to be a super exciting weekend as we went to Sears to purchase sewing machines. Unfortunately, Sears was out of stock of the machine that they wanted. They ordered them and the machines are supposed to be in on Wednesday, but it was disappointing to leave the store empty-handed.

Our sewing, however, went well. We started on their dresses and made the darts (front and back) and installed the zippers! Here is a shot of Juana showing off her first zipper and the flattering fit of the back:

We had a brief discussion of how my Spanish has improved over the last couple of months and I made a joke about how, if I ever went to Mexico, I could talk to people - about sewing! I imagined a conversation going something like this:

Me: Hi, my name is Gwen.

Person on the Street (POTS): Hi, my name is ...

Me: How are you?

POTS: Fine, thank you.

Me: You have lovely darts and I like your hem.

POTS: ?!?!? La gringa es loco!!!