Spring and Summer Sewing

It's been a long, long time since I did a sewing post!  I have been sewing since then, but I had a few things that really cut down on how much:

1. It was a very rough Winter semester.  I had two sections of students (so, around 70 students), and I kid you not, someone had a personal emergency every single day of that semester.  That's 14 weeks and that's a lot of personal emergencies.

2.I thought I would have more time to sew this summer.  I forgot that last summer was less busy than usual because things weren't entirely done with the pandemic, and that made me forget how completely exhausting summer is.

3. I accidentally started a monthlong project during my break between semesters when I usually get more sewing done, and I did that at the same time that my sciatica was acting up a lot and I couldn't sit very comfortably.

All that being said, here's the projects I did in the spring and summer! I know it looks like a lot of sewing to people, but it didn't really feel like it and I missed it.

This was supposed to be Molly's birthday dress and turned into her Easter dress.  It's the Oliver + S Fairy Tale Dress.  I also used this pattern for her baptism dress but this has a few different pattern elements. I added the cuffs from the Building Block dress to have more of the contrast visible from the front.  Molly picked her favorite print from Harmony and then she picked the solid that she liked the best.  It turned out so pretty!  I love that giant bow in the back especially.

Up next is the Liesl & Co. Geneva Blouse!  I used a shadow-stripe gray double gauze and it's a great weight.  My favorite thing about this pattern is the lantern sleeve.  If I make another one, I will probably raise the neckline slightly because it has ended up a little low for my personal taste.

This Friday Patterns Geneva Dress turned out great but was straight-up cursed.  It started out when I realized mid-cut that I didn't have enough fabric to either make it long-sleeved or as long as I wanted.  I saved it, but with some difficult.  I COULD NOT get the drawstrings to work well because the fabric was so slippery.  I had some massive issues with the back yoke (and not enough fabric to recut) that took all of my sewing skills to save.  Every single time I wanted to sew had something terrible come up with PTA or work or the kids.  The sleeve elastic was initially way, way, way too tight. I do love the final product and the tencel twill is my favorite, but the process was awful. It's not a problem with the pattern, but just a lot of bad luck.

Elliott outgrew his pajamas so pajamas jumped to the top of my pile!  I used my classic Oliver + S School Bus t-shirt and Playtime leggings and a cute camping print and a cute otter print, both from Raspberry Creek fabrics.  He loves them both!

I've had this project in mind for years when I saw a similar picture.  My boys both adore the Oliver + S Sketchbook shorts, and this pair also uses the beautiful cargo pockets from the Field Trip cargo pants.  I have had this stretch twill sitting around FOREVER.  I made a skirt for Molly with it five years ago, and then I was going to use the leftover to make shorts for myself.  I finally realized that the reason I had never made them is that I didn't actually want to wear those shorts, and it's a good thing, because there was not an adult pair of shorts available from this fabric. It's perfect for Elliott!

I bought the fabric and the pattern for this Amherst shirt right before the start of the pandemic, and then I just kind of forgot about for two years.  I love making button-down shirts more than almost anything, and this was no exception.  Fun fact: the pink stripes in this are the only non-floral pink parts of my wardrobe.  It is, um, very clearly not the only striped object in my wardrobe.

Rib knit is Molly's favorite fabric in the world.  I saw someone make a Made for Mermaids poppy dress out of some rib knit from Raspberry Creek earlier this summer, and I knew Molly would love it.  She has worn it SO MUCH since then!

I've been wishing I had another Liesl & Co. Gelato dress ever since I made my first one three years ago, so I finally made one!  This time, I used a patterned linen blend.  You can't really see that it has pockets because of the print, but it's a pull-on dress in a lightweight fabric with pockets and I don't think you can beat that for summer at all.

And now, for my month-long mega project!  A long time ago, I got the idea that hand-embroidering a dress for Molly would be fun.  I picked the Oliver + S Croquet dress because a) I love that pattern and b) It had yoke pieces that would end up being fully lined.  The last dress I made for Molly with embroidery always made me nervous to wash because the embroidered piece didn't have a backing.

I failed to consider that embroidery takes a really long time, and it took me an extra-long time because I don't have a lot of experience with embroidery.  My best estimate is that the flowers took at least 30 hours to embroider.  It could have been more and I blocked it from my memory!  In contrast, it took me about 4 hours to cut and sew the dress :) It's a beautiful piece and I'm incredibly proud of it!

On Sunday Afternoon

We have church at 9 AM this year, which means we have very, very long open afternoons after church.  For at least a little of that time, we watch family-friendly shows like Relative Race or Making Good.  If I am very, very tired from Primary, we may just watch any show the kids like. We may read books or play some board games. The one thing that I do not want, though, is any computer games or computer game content.

This means that sometimes the kids get very creative.  One Sunday, Molly had been in the basement for a long time and she came up with a hand-sewn pillow!

Another day, we had done a blindfold activity to take about following the Holy Ghost.  The boys loved it so much that they created a very elaborate blindfold maze.

Labor Day Weekend

We had an adventure-filled Labor Day weekend!

We started our Saturday at Manila Pond.  At the end of the summer, Elliott was so, so excited to be a pool floaty that all three of the kids could fit on with his Boredom Buster Bingo money.  It arrived, and then we found out it was too big to fit in our car at the same time any people were in it.  Critically, it was also too big to be allowed in the Lindon Pool and the PG pool was closed for the season.  Luckily, the city pond has no size requirements and if we go on a weekend, we can take both cars :)

Our afternoon plan was to go see Minions: Rise of Gru for National Cinema day.  The tickets had only been $3 each and Elliott was beyond thrilled.  The combination of pool floatie and movie had led to him proclaiming that this was the "best day of his life" all week!  I went to find our tickets in our email, and found that I had an email from them (that had gone to my spam, by the way), saying that our tickets had been canceled because they had a mechanical problem in the theater.  I was crushed.  Elliott was crushed.

Luckily, at this point, I frantically googled other theaters and it turned out that our closest theater still had seats available.  This honestly turned out better than before because the only theater I could find when I was shopping for tickets was 30 minutes away and had much more expensive snacks than our nearby theater.

On Monday, we headed to the Fashion Place mall.  I was very excited to shop for a birthday present that ended up not being there, but we still had fun taking the escalators in Nordstrom and looking through the Lego store.  We also loved this rotating prism installation!

Paper Source had a Tiny T. Rex stuffie, and we LOVE Tiny T. Rex.  

We went out to Laziz Kitchen for lunch.  The kids and I loved it but it had too much cucumber for Gerrit. 

Farmers Markets and Fountains

One of my favorite summer activities is the Provo Farmer's Market, so we headed down on a Saturday morning after Gerrit finished cleaning the church.

The city of Provo has recently installed this really cool fountain in front of their public works building.  I've never seen anything like it!

The pictures can only kind of capture that the water falls in shapes, so hopefully you can see it a little better in these videos:

Diamonds

Diagonal lines

We got a passion fruit frozen limeade, baleados (steak and bacon tacos) from Honduras, a giant avocado and bacon hot dog from Chile, a ham and cheese empanada, raspberries, and peaches.

We also decided we needed to do a big macaron taste off.  One place had our favorite overall macaron, but then four others we didn't really like.  The other place had consistently good macarons and also the overall cutest macaron:

We partly went because it was dahlia season and I really wanted to get flowers.  Aren't they so gorgeous?

It's Ortho Time

Miles has braces now!

His dentist has been recommending braces for about a year, but our dental insurance wouldn't actually cover them until the start of 2022 because we had a gap in coverage from Gerrit's last job switch.  I thought it would be a great choice for Miles to get braces over the summer.  I didn't realize that when I called the orthodontist at the start of May that they wouldn't be able to get him in for a consult until the end of July and we wouldn't be able to get Miles in for braces until the fifth day of school.  In retrospect, yes, it would have been very nice to get Miles in for braces over the summer, and I've learned my lesson for future kids.

He did great with the installation and has been doing great at taking care of them!  He was really, really heartbroken, though, when he realized that he's not supposed to eat many of his favorite foods like beef jerky and nuts and chips.  I never had braces, so my knowledge was just things like caramel and corn on the cob being off limits.  Anyone have any favorite braces-friendly snack recommendations?

The orthodontist's office was really nice.  One of the things they do is have the kids sign a cooperation contract.  This is how Miles signs a cooperation contract, apparently. (Look at the two bottom signature spaces).

Outside Primary

Our Primary as a whole was really struggling with reverence earlier this summer.  My secretaries had the great idea to do an initiative program, so one of them put together a really cute picture of a pool that we could put floaties that they'd earned with reverent behavior onto.  Once they filled the pool, we got to have Primary outside.

After two months, we finally earned the floaties!  The day before outside Primary, we had a pretty heavy rainstorm.  I walked around on the grass barefoot afterwards and it seemed like the ground should be dry the next day.  I failed to consider that our neighborhood is so poorly watered that things would drain very differently at the church!

My feet got soaked on the walk to church that day and I got very, very nervous.  I walked into sacrament meeting and realized that we had tons of kids who aren't normally there because they were excited for outside primary and I was so, so worried about disappointing them.  In a true tender mercy, we had just have towels and blankets between all of the presidency and teachers for everyone to sit and be dry! We combined everyone for singing time and then went all over the grass around the building for classes, and then met back for popsicles at the very end.

We had more kids than we've had all year!  45 kids might not sound like much to most wards in our area, but it was such a delightful day to see everyone show up at the same time :)

Back to School 2022

We're back to school for the year!

Molly got to go to a back to school party thrown by her friend Lexi.  They painted leopards (our school mascot) and she had the best time ever.

Molly also got a new backpack this year and Miles was stunned by how big it was.  I'll point out that she has several large paper towel rolls in there for a teacher donation.

And the first day of school!

Miles is in eighth grade this year.  He has four half-year classes (PE, health, mythology, and exploring technology), and six full-year classes (science, accelerated math, French, orchestra, ALL English, and ALL US history).

Molly is in fifth grade with Mr. Allred. He's new to our school this year but so far Molly really likes him!

Elliott is in second grade with Mrs. Clay.  That's a different teacher than Miles and Molly, but I've heard lots of good things and he likes her a lot so far.  The sprinklers have almost never been on this summer, so of course they turned on while I was taking Elliott's picture.  The second picture is him running away from the sprinklers :)