HELLO DOLLY!

My mom was the home economics queen bee in her high school days, winning trophies and such. Me? I can barely sew on a button. By the time I reached junior high school and could take elective classes, she insisted I need to take a home ec. class as well. I gave in and signed up. But I flunked out due to the fact that I never did finish my groovy purple Hawaiian sunset shirt (give me a break, people, it was the late '70s!!!).

Anyway, one day Laci came to me and said, "I want to learn how to sew."

So I said, "Well, maybe when you get older, we can take sewing classes."

I do now wish I learned how to sew. I think it would be fun to make some little dresses like my mom did for me and my sister when we were little. I actually had a friend in my school days whose mom was a seamstress. My friend would go to her mom and say, "Mom, I have nothing to wear to school tomorrow" and her mom would whip her something up over night like a little elf. And the worst part about it, it looked like something out of a department store!! She was a great sewer.

My mom doesn't sew anymore. You can actually buy clothes cheaper now in most stores than you can the material alone, seeing as how all of our clothes are made outside the US.

But one day we were browsing through the library and Laci came across this book called "Made By Me." It's a wonderful book with lots of great colorful photographs of all sorts of crafts you can make by hand. It teaches you how to do just about every kind of simple stitch by hand. So we took the book home and decided we would attempt to make a few of the things. In the back of the book we found the cutest little ragdoll. so we decided to make her so that it could be a keepsake for Laci. Remember, I cannot sew either, so it was a learning experience, mostly with me just assisting and trying to show her what I don't know either. :) You know, sort of like the blind leading the blind. So we learned how to do a backstitch, which led to the creation of Dolly.

Since it was Laci's first sewing project, we decided to enter Dolly in the fair exhibition. We went to pick her up Sunday afternoon and little Dolly had a blue first place ribbon attached to her. When we first arrived we could not find Dolly on the table in which we had left her. Laci was about in tears. I think she was afraid someone had taken her. But as we wandered down the exhibit hall, we finally found her, inside a glass cassing locked up safe, along with a few other fragile things. Isn't that sweet? Laci was so excited to see her blue ribbon, she was jumping up and down screaming. I wished I would have had my camera.



The special thing about Dolly is she is a two-sided doll. On one side she is asleep and has on her nightgown, which just happens to match her pillow ~



And when you flip her over, she's awake. See her pretty eyelashes?



But oops, we have not finished Dolly's dress for when she is awake, so if you play with her while she is awake, she will be naked. We really need to finish her clothes.



But as you can see, she really is quite a simple doll. Once you get the pattern cut out, just do a backstitch along the dotted lines.

Caleb has gotten in on the sewing fun as well. I've taught him and Laci how to sew on buttons. I let them use one of their old T-shirts to practice sewing on buttons. He's even practiced a little first aide when it comes to little boo-boos on his stuffed animals. A task he's taken on by himself ~





Poor bunny!

We are not members of the 4-H in our community, nor do we go to the awesome art class they have here in our county (maybe in our future), but Caleb loves to draw and is very creative making things, which goes on a lot in our house. And I wasn't even sure of the age group or the categories at the fair, so this year we went and got some ideas for Caleb to make something next year. I do want my kids to try new things to see if they like them, to learn to be creative and to me the most fun you can do to encourage them in this endeavor is to display that creativity. It was fun to walk through the exhibit hall at the fair and see all of the displays. A child can really enter anything in the fair; a craft, sewing, drawings, photography, Legos, produce, flowers -- anything.

Oh, and one more surprise when we got there, first place in the children's category also won $2.50. Whoo-hoo. So we added it to our Disney fund jar. And that really got my kids motivated. They came home and started doing all sorts of drawings and crafts talking about what they would enter next year. I love motivating them! It's truly fun. Think about encouraging your children to enter something in the fair next year. Aside from the prizes given, it's rewarding for them to see their projects on display!

Oh, and by the way, the categories start at ages 5-8, 9-12, and on up from there! Hope to see you at the fair next year!