I'm so glad that we have a long weekend - I've had a crazy couple of weeks with the start of school. One of my classes (the continuation of the Anatomy class I took last semester, so I had to take it) got canceled last minute and I ended up having to take it during the day which meant finding a babysitter about four days before I needed her to start. And now we have to get out of the house by 7:30 on M,W,F for my class and 7:45 on T, Th for Peter's preschool. Yes - every day of the week we are up and at 'em. I was so happy the boys let us sleep in this morning. And I'm not happy about the whole school schedule situation, but I'll survive it - it's only for four months.
Last weekend we had a nice long weekend too. Ryan went to San Diego for a conference (do I wish I had gone with him? yes, but my classes started while he was gone.) and my Mom came to visit and help out while he was gone. And, of course, in true crafty mom and daughter fashion, we had to have a couple of projects to keep us busy. One of those projects was making eight dresses! I needed a birthday present for one of Peter and Ned's little friends and suddenly it turned into making a dress for every girl I knew who was having a birthday or being born (I'm getting a new niece here any day now - can't wait to see her!) in the next few months. This will be great as I'm sure when the time comes, I'll be busy with school and not have much time for making things and I'll just be able to pull out the dress I made last weekend. Hooray for planning and making ahead!
This was also my first chance to use Sandi's Claire Pattern. Everything went together pretty smoothly - thanks for a great pattern Sandi! My mom had brought her serger down, so that was a big part of why we were able to whip this out so quickly. We used cookie trays during the sewing process to keep the pieces of the different sizes together. I did the ruffling and the rolled hems. My mom put the pieces together and did the elastic. And suddenly, in less than 12 hours total, we had eight dresses. Like I said, I hadn't planned on making eight - I went to the fabric store without the pattern and found a piece of fabric I thought would work. It was on a really great sale ($1.50 a yard), so I bought extra, "just in case". I bought a little bit of some other pieces to go with it and when we were cutting out, we were able to get eight dresses out of them. I did have to find a few pieces in my stash for sleeves and ruffles, but not much.
So, this brings me to the giveaway. All of the dresses have a home, except for this one. Help me give it a home by signing up for the giveaway. This one was made in the size four, but it would really probably fit a girl up to a size 6 or so. Just leave a comment and you're entered. International entries are welcome. Also, if you mention the giveaway on your blog, I will enter you a second time - just send me an e-mail to jjumpupanddown at gmail dot com (yes that is two j's at the beginning -think (j)essi (j)umpupanddown) with the link where you mentioned the giveaway. Feel free to use my not so great photo in your post (I thought about having the only 4 year old I have handy modeling it for me, but I don't think he would've gone for it. Remember all the trouble I had getting him to wear his apron the first time?) I'll leave this open until next Friday, January 23 at 5 pm or so my time. Good luck!
