Learning from a Pattern

I am teaching myself to sew, using a pattern now. I was working on making a little "smock" (for lack of a better term) for my little bit. I was working with a couple of patterns provided free online, but they where not sized like I needed them to be. In order to save the material I had, I was using fleece. Let me just say that crafting with fleece is AWSOME. You can cut it and not have to worry about finishing. Also, I got the fleece by buying a blanket from Walmart for $4.

My mother came over one day while little bit was running around with a fleece invention on. She told me to just go get a pattern. FINE. Never having used one before, I jumped right in. Well, I had to resew the seams a couple of times as I adjusted the size and length. In the end, I got what I wanted. I even sewed buttonholes. (Picture to come later.)

To top this off, I have been decorating for Christmas. We have the tree set up in the big living room, but our fire place is in the den. This makes decorating, easily, a whole house affair. Well, not this year. My 1 1/2 year old is Miss Distructo!! She keeps taking the decorations off the tree. Pulling on anything that hangs. Overall, making this year a "minimalist" decoration year. I love to put the cards we receive on the wall and made a couple of paper trees to decorate. (Picture to come...and if wanted, pattern as well.)

Here is the patten I made. I place the paper on the back side of my scrapbooking paper that is folded in half. The pattern should be 11 inches tall. I cut out three trees. I am not sure if you can tell from the picture, but two trees only have one side glued while the last tree is glued to the other two. I also shrunk the pattern so that it was only 5 inches tall, cut out four trees and glued all of them together so that it stands on a table top.

Finally, I purchased a desk from craigslist for $15. I cannot keep taking up our dining room table to sew. The desk is in a bad way. I need to sand and paint. I hope to get started this Saturday. I really would love to get it into our room before the end of the year.

Like always, I have some picture to upload of things I have done and a list of "to do" as long as ever. Updates on these to come as I find the time to upload the pics. Uploaded pictures on 12/22/09.