For My Daughter

My 3 year old daughter LOVES when I sew at home. Her favorite part is sitting on my lap and pulling the "binks" (pins) out as we sew and putting them on my magnetic pin cushion. She likes to help by putting her hands on the back of my hands as we feed the fabric through the machine. She asks me on a regular basis "are we gonna sew today mom?". I love it. Having her help me with the pins and the sewing is nice because her attention span can only handle a few minutes at a time. She helps me sew, then goes to play while I pin the next section we are gonna work on. Then she is ready to sit still again for a few minutes. The MOST exciting part is when we are all done and she puts on the clothes that we've made and runs to tell her dad that SHE made her own clothes all by herself. Oh, and mom helped a little. The pride and excitement that is on her face is totally priceless. I was thinking when she gets older that if she is still interested I may buy her her own little kids sewing machine. That would be fun for us to do together.

These pajama pants probably would have taken me less than an hour to do had I been working on the myself. But my daughter was helping and that about doubled the time it took. I'm ok with that though because we did it together and it was fun. My mom gave me the fabric I used for the pants to use as curtains. I liked the little ducks on the bottom and thought it would be super cute as a pair of pants. And so it was. They are a little bit big for her right now but she loves to wear them because she made them.

In all honesty I really do NOT like this shirt. It came out too short for as wide as it is (even though I followed the pattern), and trying to make the straps was impossible. Make thin straps then turn them inside right. Yeah, right. I finally gave up on the straps and used bias tape. I had never used bias tape before and didn't realize that one side is longer than the other AND that you are supposed to open it up, sew it, fold it over, and sew it again. At least I think thats the way it was explained. I was annoyed and confused with this shirt. It went in the "never gonna wear it but learned something anyway" pile.