In the beginning....

I want to start off by saying that I have just recently decided it is time to conquer my fear of sewing, and finally make some of the things I've been putting off for years.

So last week I got my hand-me-down sewing machine out of storage, downloaded the instruction manual and gave myself a crash course in sewing 101. I mean, it's not like I have never sewn anything in my life, but after several failed projects in sewing class at school, I just kind of figured that was one of the skills that didn't come naturally to me, like driving and cooking.

Now having two kids and living on a fairly tight budget, I figured this would be a good time to be able to make things for my kids to wear, use and play with.

So, last week I successfully made a few softie baby rattles for my son and a mini crayon roll for my daughter, but this week my greatest accomplishment has been successfully making a dress that my daughter can actually wear!! And I wanted to share that HUGE accomplishment here (because I am so proud of myself!!)

So I found a project in Australian Homespun magazine, vol 11.2, for this gorgeous pinafore dress.



And I found this gorgeous woman's skirt (which is WAY too small for me) at my local thrift store.



And I immediately thought that skirt would make the cutest dress for my daughter, and that's how it began.

I didn't take photos of the process, because I was just obsessed with getting it finished before I lost interest and gave up. But I used the lace feature at the front of the skirt for the front of the dress, I tried to use as many of the original seams as possible, because there's no way my seams were gonna be anywhere near that good, and I used the lining as well. Towards the end I realised that buttonholes were required to do up the dress, and I freaked out a bit, because I have never sewn a buttonhole in my life, and even after reading through the sewing machine manual I still had no idea how to do it. I did a couple of practice runs on a scrap of fabric.



But, as you can see, they were disastrous. So I rummaged through my craft supplies and my junque supplies and finally found a couple of those little metal dome thingies (I don't know what they are called), that just needed to be hand sewn onto the dress, easy peasy.



There you have it, my first wearable creation!! And it fits and looks cute and it's just like I imagined. Can you tell I am just a little bit proud of myself ;-)