Yankee Doodle Sweethearts

Happy Independence Day from Washington!  My awesome mom-in-law and I celebrated by sewing the most adorable dresses for Eliza and my neices Laila and Liberty.  (Yes, her name is Liberty Bell...)  I was very excited to get a sewing lesson from Dan's mom, who is a master seamstress.  We made this from an actual pattern, which required confronting such frightening concepts as interfacing, tucks, buttonholes, and sewing on a curve!  I felt very grown up.  :)  I made Eliza's nearly all by myself (with my MIL's guidance and answers to my approximately 10,000 questions), and then she turned out the other two in about a third of the time it had taken me to do one.  Wow.  Can I be like that when I grow up?  Though I may be very slow, I was very proud of myself -- this is the first project I've done where I didn't have to put a "don't look too closely!" disclaimer on it.  This little dress looks great from any distance!

We got our little girlies together for pictures, but it was the end of a very long day and they were all pretty cranky.  Still awfully cute, though!  This is the best one -- in all the rest at least one of them is bawling her eyes out.

Twirly Skirts!

I have never been a seamstress, but something about having a little girl and seeing cute fabrics and patterns makes me go a little crazy! When we made a spur-of-the-moment plan to go to Disneyland for our family trip instead of to Lake Powell, I thought, "Sure I have a thousand things to do to get ready, but surely the top of my priority list should be making matching twirly skirts for Eliza, Amelia and Taya to wear to Disneyland!" Amelia and Taya are my adorable nieces, and Amelia was here all the way from England for our fun family trip! She and Eliza are just 9 days apart. I used the same Pink Fig pattern as I used for Eliza's birthday skirt, and my workmanship definitely improved with this go-round! Sadly, my kids and I all got swine flu the weekend we were supposed to leave, so we didn't get to go to Disneyland after all, but yesterday we got the girlies all dressed up in their skirts so we could at least get some pictures! Nana had bought them the cute little Minnie Mouse ears at Disneyland. I was very gratified that Taya is totally in love with her skirt -- she insisted she wear it both days they went to Disneyland, and she described to me in great detail how pretty it is when she twirls in it!.

Eliza's skirt is still quite big on her -- I think next Halloween she might just have to be Minnie Mouse!