my pink life, mi vida rosada

Currently on the embroidery machine: a swimsuit for my 2 year old niece, getting a precious little monogram, so she and my girls can all "match" at the pool and the beach this summer. I don't know why it sometimes takes me so incredibly long to get things monogrammed -- for my own kids, I've got so many of their monograms pre-set and it really doesn't take that long or that much effort to hoop the items.  I bought the bathing suits on clearance at the end of last summer, and while there is really no reason to be monogramming them *today,* today it is.  I'm avoiding cutting in to the red and white bird knit, making myself another Jade tee.  I need to just go ahead and do it -- but for some reason the monogramming came first today. Another "just get it done already" project that did actually get done: finishing these little dresses that my mom started for me and my sister, when we were small.  Do they even still sell dresses in this form?  I...

Well, I guess I found some more projects that aren't the love seat.  Funny how new projects creep their way into the plans when you take a trip to the fabric store for one color thread for that little monogram on the new dresses for family pictures and end up walking through the whole entire store for more than an hour.  I'm sure it only happens to me, right? I knew I wanted to monogram the girls' dresses for our upcoming family pictures, and I knew I wanted to use mint-green for the monograms....and then all of a sudden, the blue thread just looked better....So I bought the blue.  Too bad for my wallet that the blue is almost the same as a blue I already had at home. Also....I'd been struggling with what outfit I want "the baby" to wear for the family pictures....church clothes?  Play clothes?  The girls' dresses are sort of in the "fancy play-clothes" category -- they will be put in drawers, not hung up (church/special occasion clothes ha...

I've been avoiding the BIG project I need to work on, and I think I'm almost out of excuses. Last week I sewed two shirts for myself -- a wearable muslin (oops, it's a little too long....but I'm not re-hemming until I know for sure it won't shrink in the washer) and a fraught-with-un-sewing "real" version of the Jade tee by Made-by-Rae.  The "muslin" version went together with hardly any trouble.  I noticed that I sewed the neckline with a 3/4" seam instead of a 3/8" seam, but I liked how it sat when I tried it on, so I chose to leave it that way.  Instead of sewing the side seams before hemming the sleeves, I hemmed the sleeves before attaching to the body of the shirt, and then sewed the sleeves and side seams all in one go. The "real" version was a little more complicated.  I learned a lot of things from making it! For example, I learned that not all knits stretch the same.  This one stretched A LOT with almost al...