Easter!

Yikes...time keeps on ticking and not pausing for a moment. This month went by in a whirlwind as we count down to quilt market--which starts tomorrow! If you are going to be at Quilt Market...stop by and say, "Hi." I'll be hanging out by the Riley Blake booth.

Last blog hop, you may remember me asking for your help on choosing fabrics for my daughter's Easter dress...there were so many fabulous ideas for fabric combos, Tara's  comment won. She suggested that I use the cream with brown dot, the pink calico, the plaid, from my Cowboy 2 collection for Riley Blake, and a more solid color to set it all off  (which I interpreted as the tone on tone paisley.) This worked out quite well, as I wanted to design some appliques for the front of the dress. I also added in a few other fabrics from Wanna be a Cowboy 1 and 2. Well I'm thrilled to say that I finished it!  This was the most ambitious project I've attempted yet.  I used the Feliz party dress pattern from the book "Sewing Clothes Kids Love" by Nancy Langdon.  It's a super book for pointers on technique and embellishments, and ideas to make clothing unique for kids. I'm thrilled with the result. I could not have done this without the ideas in this book!

A little about the appliques...I knew I wanted a fun "spring scene" on the pinafore of the dress. I started shaping bunnies and flowers with scissors, then laying them out on the front of her dress. When she came home from school she looked at what I was doing...I thought she would love it...but to my surprise she said, "Those weren't the kind of bunnies I was thinking of." Truthfully, I was stuck with the arrangement and it wasn't going as smoothly as I had hoped...so I asked my daughter, "what kind of bunnies were you thinking of?" She said, "Well an Easter bunny...you know, Mom...the kind that's white with a pink bow and standing like this." She turned to her side and posed the way she thought an Easter bunny should look.  It made me smile...of course...that is why the applique wasn't going so well...I didn't involve my daughter's help.  She's full of good ideas.  So I cut a bunny that she liked (it's the white one with brown polka dots) and started my arrangement again, and everything clicked.  She knew just what the dress needed, and I was glad to have her help.  

On the back of the dress I used prints from both my Cowboy 1 and Cowboy 2 collections. If you are a store and you carried Cowboy 1 and have a little left on a few bolts, you can blend the Cowboy 2 with the Cowboy 1 collection perfectly.  (That goes the same for you sewers out there who still have Cowboy 1 in your stash...Cowboy 2 is a perfect match.)

So my 3 year old son, who is totally mesmerized by machines, sat and watched me make Sydney's dress for many hours.  He finally said, "Mom, can you make me a dress too?"  I told him I wouldn't make him a dress, but I would make him something he would love.  So I made him a bowling shirt, with cowboy appliques.  There's a boot on the front, and a suede star on his back (washable suede...the coolest stuff--I had to sacrifice an old Eddie Bower skirt that didn't fit right, but was made of a gorgeous tan washable suede.) Colin was thrilled.  When we walked into church on Sunday, he gripped his cowboy boot on his shirt and told everyone as we walked down the isle, "My Mom made this, My Mom made this." He embarrassed me a little...I swear he wasn't coached, but it made me smile because he was so proud to wear it. The smile says it all!

Now I've got three kids, and it really isn't cool to sew for two of them and not the third...so I sewed a tie for my oldest child, Talon. He was a good sport to wear it.