Some cook, I sew and write: creativity brings joy

Last week I finished my most ambitious project yet.  A dress.  The pattern displayed a sundress with lightly gathered straps that I pictured as a different color and print with a coordinating shirt underneath.  Or even white with a bright pink or tie-dye shirt.  I don't do black or white underneath unless those colors are integral to the dress nor am I enamored with putting shrugs  over the top.  They often ruin the look and are too hot for summer anyway. Here's the pattern: When my daughter saw it, however, she wanted to wear to make a white dress to perform her soliloquy that she wrote for a character from  Way of Kings  in her English class because that's the way she pictured her character.  However, she wanted sleeves rather than a strap with shirt. How hard could it be to modify the pattern?  My mother did things like that for me all the time when I was growing up.  Umm, yeah.  Perish the thought. At first I t...

After I bought my new Janome, I let it sit for a little bit and mostly looked at different projects that I could try. I even bought a jacket course from Craftsy but have yet to purchase fabric for that jacket.  Someday I will!!! But I'm chicken and only made simple things at first.  After all, it has been a few  years  decades since my mother taught me to sew, and I've only made a few things in between.  Mother had to rescue a few of those projects like my daughter's pioneer dress, pinafore, and bonnet because the directions were so very, very confusing to me.  Mother was an amateur seamstress only because she would never sew for pay.  She always said her time was too expensive, and the price would take any item she might sell to sky-high levels.  She made things as gifts sometimes but never for pay. Then I discovered diaper clutches.  They are simple, require minimal lengths of fabric, and seem like a good idea.  I like the patte...

I love my husband.  I love him for lots of reasons, but this time it is for telling me to buy a new sewing machine.  Let me be clear.  I already had a nice Viking that I took into the store for some maintenance.  I don't sew a lot--okay, very minimally, like repairs and hems.  However, I had been playing with the idea of sewing crafty items of some sort to sell.  I could have done that with my not-so-basic Viking, but the ladies at Luke's showed me the latest and greatest Janome sewing machine.  They would have shown me the embroidery machine, but I drew the line at the cost.  So I learned what their best deal was (a really good offer), and I went home to think about it and (hopefully) forget.  I'm sure the saleslady didn't expect to see me again. But I mentioned it to my husband.  Like immediately before I left the store.  Okay, I texted him about it because he works a regular day job and it was mid-day, mid-week.  And he ...