A Nasturtium Dress and A Strawberry Dress

The nasturtiums that Maya and I planted from seeds have flourished considerably since that first blossom a while back. The blooms are too numerous to count and range in gorgeous colors from bright yellow to orange to a deep luscious red.


This week, I sewed a dress for Maya with some fabric I bought at the thrift store. She noticed that the colors of the flowers are very similar to the nasturtiums so we quickly named this "The Nasturtium Dress."

(yes, that is my reflection in the window, how silly of me!)

I sewed this dress up in a sweet strawberry fabric. Too bad we don't have a strawberry patch to take pictures in.

It's hard to believe these two dress came from the same pattern: New Look 6882

I think Maya has enough summer dresses to finish out the season. I now need to get to work on fall dresses for her. It's so much fun!

One Pattern, Three Dresses

When sewing for a quickly growing young lady, it does not add up to have several dress patterns all in the same size. Maya is getting so big lately that I would not be able to use the patterns quickly enough before she would grow out of them! These
dresses were all sewn with the same basic pattern. The fun part is in designing them so differently that you can hardly tell they are the same.

First, her Easter dress. I sewed this up using a very softly colored white floral on pale pink fabric. Then to jazz it up just a little, I trimmed it with crocheted lace at the shoulders and high waist and added three small flower buttons that picked up the pattern nicely.







I love the print of this dress. The tiny daisies are so precious on the light, turquoise blue. I added three small, white pearl buttons and also use the slightly longer sleeves for this one. I chose not to add any other trim but made a bow for her hair in a matching ribbon. This dress is so summery.







And finally this green and bright pink number. I used some leftover green linen and matched up a splashy floral print in bright fuschia pink. I trimmed it in a bright matching ribbon and a tailored bow. I left the collar and buttons off of this one and it is the only one of the three in which I mixed fabrics for the bodice and skirt portion. This dress has a quite a different look than the other two.








For me, a large part of the fun of sewing is in being able to design dresses and make them unique. Using your imagination makes it easy to get the most out of each pattern before they are outgrown!

School Planning 2009-2010

School is out and summer is in full swing but academic planning goes on!
Here is what we have scheduled for the upcoming school year. There are still a few things to be decided but all in all we're sticking a great deal to what we've been doing because things have gone great.

Miranda-7th grade:
Learning Language Arts Through Literature-Green
A Beka Basic Mathematics in Christian Perspective-7th grade
Mystery of History Volume 3
Science (first half) : Answers in Genesis God's Design for Chemistry Properties of Matter (we finished the first book this past spring.)
Science (second half): undecided but maybe begin God's Design for the Physical World
Latina Christiana 2
Fallacy Detective
Wordsmith

For all:
Art and Classical Music will continue in the Charlotte Mason style we've always used.

Levi-4th grade
Primary Language Lessons (need to finish last 1/3 of book)
A Beka Language 4 (we'll take this at a slower pace)
A Beka Arithmetic 4

Levi and Maya together:
Mystery of History Volume 1
Prima Latina (finish) then begin Latina Christiana 1
Writing with Ease (maybe-still deciding)
Mindbenders
Science-undecided but I'm thinking on it! :) I may continue unit studies with Levi and Maya-that has been working well.

Maya-2nd grade
Learning Language Arts through Literature-Yellow
A Beka Arithmetic 2 (finish last half then begin Arithmetic 3)

So, that is it so far. We've been on summer break for one month now and I miss school. I'm getting a lot of sewing and cleaning done but I miss all that great learning!

A Happy Father's Day

Sharing a picture of my beloved ones on a Happy Father's Day.

God has been so very good to me.

Maya Loves Sewing

It did not take the girls long to dig into the new fabric. I barely had time to wash and dry it before they were ready to begin some sewing projects of their own. Miranda sewed up a bright new pillow for Zoey.
Maya decided she wanted to sew up a small tote bag. We did not use a pattern for this one, just cut out a nice length of fabric. The sewing was all straight lines and she practiced pivoting when she needed to turn and stitch.

She is very intent on her project.

She is very fast with the presser foot on the straight lines, as is her big sister. Lord help me when they start driving a car!

Her finished project and she sewed every stitch!

Recovering

Tuesday we took Zoey to the clinic to be spayed. It was a hard day for us to be without her for 8 hours (a hard day for her too.) Happily, she is recovering nicely and is getting a lot of love, attention, and cuddling.
Miranda sewed up this vivid pillow for Zoey to recover on because she thought the bright colors would be cheerful.

A Thrifty Day

Two years ago I discovered a nearby thrift store. I mostly shopped there for books and have discovered several good ones to add to our bookshelves.

After I received my new sewing machine for Christmas I remembered the thrift store always had a great deal of fabric. Over the past 5 months I have found some great fabric including wonderful quality cotton and linen which I love sewing with.
Monday was the monthly half price day and I was not disappointed! Here is the main reason I went:

All in all I found about 38 yards of fabric and I paid only $14 for it!!

I also hit the jack-pot in adding to my ever growing vintage pattern collection. I could hardly believe that I found these gorgeous patterns! My heart did a bit of a flutter.

I bought 30 patterns for only 10 cents each. I love sewing with vintage patterns-the detailing is so lovely and look at those graphics!

As a bonus I bought these vintage books. There is something so compelling about these hardback books and three of them have their dust jackets intact.

Vogue's Book of Smart Service is a most unusual book. It was written in 1930 to explain the duties of butlers, valets, and various maids (yes I know it sounds odd but bear with me). What compelled me to buy it was the wonderful drawings and graphics in the book. The book is in amazing shape to be 79 years old!

My Life for Beauty was also an interesting find and is a biography of Helena Rubinstein. Add to that Fashion Sewing for Everyone and one more fun looking book and I had a fun and thrifty shopping expedition.