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Summertime....Getting it done, slowly

It's a lot of stop and start around here....fits and bursts, and not a lot of anything complete.

It's also one of my two weeks this summer where I have a few mornings to myself with no one else in my house!!!  This is, perhaps, more exciting to me than it should be.

Sweet hubby is making progress in his recovery from the acute back pain associated with his degenerated disc.  He continues to attend physical therapy and to do all sorts of recommended stretched throughout the day.  He and our two oldest are participating in VBS this week, and the "baby" is attending "camp" at his nursery school....and I am trying to make progress on the get-it-done list.

I will have a total of three mornings to myself this week.  Each morning is approximately 2.5 hours long. It's not a lot of time. But it is SOME time, and that is more than I usually have.

So today, I finished hemming the re-make of the white dress.  It's not perfect, I'm not sure I'll wear it, especially not for the family photos I had really been hoping it would be perfect for, but it is currently finished.  (This "finished" status may change, once I try it on again and decide whether it needs an extra layer of lining -- it *might* be a little more see-through than I prefer to wear my clothes.)

This morning, I made the extra piping necessary to finish grey chair number two.

This morning, I pulled out some double gauze from my huge pile of scraps/leftovers/not used for their original intent bins, and found the geranium pattern by Rae Hoekstra in my pattern box, and got to work making a new dress for Miss Middle.  It is coming together very quickly!  This is not my first time using this pattern, and it has the most lovely, clear directions with lots of very helpful illustrations.  I highly recommend it. Either after nap time (sewing machine is too loud for nap time in my house) or after bed time (night time sleep is so much deeper than nap time sleep around here), I'm hopeful I'll have the chance to sew the skirt to the bodice.  Then I'll have a hem and some buttons or snaps left to go before I can call it finished!  This dress will be made entirely out of things that were purchased previously for other projects -- so other than the cost of time (and camp, to acquire that time...), free.

Perhaps it would be wise for me to acquire an actual pattern to make myself a dress?  Perhaps it would turn out better than just trying to copy a dress I already have?  I will have to look into this possibility....it would be really neat, I think, if I managed to sew an outfit for each of the kids and myself that I like enough for us all to wear handmades in our family photos this year....

Other goals for this week include embroidery on bloomers for my niece, a lunchbox for Miss Middle, maybe on a bodice for the dress-to-be-a-top that I stole the lace for the sort-of-ill-fitting-and-probably-see-through dress I just finished....Finishing the gauze dress for Miss Middle, and getting started on some baby and wedding gifts for upcoming special occasions.



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