I am not sure what made me do it.  I just felt that I needed a sock project bag and remembered All People Quilt’s grab bag.  I cut out the peices and sewed it in an hour or maybe an hour and a half.  It was fun and I am loving it.  When I first got my sewing machine this was probably the second or third thing I made.  It was horrible.  I can’t find a picture of it.  It was a reminded of how skills change, you learn to do things and they are no longer a struggle.

I have stopped trying to cut fabric using scissors and instead use a rotary cutter. I know when I need to pin and when I can just wing it. I also know that I need to press seams out EVERY time because when I don’t my sewing looks like a cat chewed on it and then threw it in the trash. I have also learned to press fabric before I cut it, it takes 10 minutes but makes everything easier and the finished thing is always sharper.

Just like socks. My first pair of socks were terrible.  They were so terrible I threw them in the trash.  I knit a test sock in neon orange acrylic yarn.  It was so scary that I thought I would never knit another sock again.  And then I kept trying, and learning.  I can now knit socks top down, toe up, on DPNs and two at a time on one needle.  If you told me that before I had learned I would have told you that you were crazy.

Just like every Friday my daughter woke up really early (Friday is the first day of the weekend here) and we did a little bit of painting and playing.  I have totally given up on sleeping in on any day of the week.  She is an early riser and so am I, so we just get up and play.  It is much easier to enjoy our time than to plead to get some more sleep.

She was the one who suggested painting. She even said she would ‘tidy up’ after herself.  But we all know what that means when it comes from the mouth of a 4 year old.  In all fairness she did try cleaning up but probably caused an even bigger mess.  Thankfully this time she didn’t try to finger paint with the water color.  She usually paints her fingers with the brush then goes all crazy with her hands.  She definitely showed more restraint.  Not that I try to stop her when she finger paints anyway.  Painting is messy, so she might as well have as much fun as she wants.

It was a lot of fun, I think I going to buy a set of brushes for myself and a big set of watercolors.
We go through a lot of arts and crafts supplies in this household.  I have some of her older paintings and it is sweet how you can see improvement.  At first it was just putting colored water on paper, now it is more about painting ‘things’ even if they don’t really look like the things.

And then after we were all done, I decided to pull out my fabric stash because I have been wanting to sew her a dress all week but couldn’t make it to the fabric stores.  I thought it might be a nice idea to make her a wearable muslin.  I found this striped fabric and thought it would make a nice dress.  I also had a chance to clean out my stash, I threw away the absolutely unusable scraps, ironed and folded the rest and organized them neatly.

I am quite pleased with how it turned out, even though it is quite short.  My little one does not sit down and when she does she usually pulls her dress up, so short dresses are not smart.  She decided it is her ‘at home’ dress anyway and is now pretending to have tea parties.  So I guess it is a winner.

I remembered why I love sewing.  It probably took 2 hours from start to cleanup to get this done which is nothing compared to knitting or even its slightly faster cousin crochet.