Therapeutic sewing

I spent a good chunk of yesterday doing some therapeutic sewing.  What is that you ask?  It's when I retreat to my room and spend time doing something that I find enjoyable and relaxing and gives me some quiet time to pray while I work as well.  There are just some days when the world seems so not right.  I have friends who are facing personal health concerns, friends who are facing serious health concerns for their children, and my heart is heavy for those who lost everything in the tornadoes.  Plus we still don't have a completed home study and I get depressed when I think about all the hoops that set of papers has to go through before we can even submit our dossier to China and begin that waiting.  And since yesterday it was cold, cloudy, and rainy for the millionth day in a row (OK, not the millionth, it just felt like it), it all adds up to a disheartening day.

So I forgot about working in the kitchen and headed upstairs to sew instead.  And while sewing is usually relaxing, yesterday it wasn't.  It was probably because the the project I chose to work on.  I'm drafting a pattern for a wrap shirt that I want to turn into a wrap dress.  It had been so long since I last worked on it that I had forgotten everything I had done and had to spend a lot of time refiguring things out.  The refiguring involved a lot of seam ripping as well.  Ugh.

But, one of the reasons I like sewing is that with enough work, I can usually get something to a point where I'm happy with it.  (And it will stay like that.  I won't have to go back and redo it.  Again.  And again.)  By the time I was done, I wasn't even sure what size it was going to turn out to be.  (My pattern drafting is more guesswork than science at this point... I truly don't know what I'm doing half the time.)  Turns out it's a 2T.  Very convenient since that's what size the girls are.  Here is the finished product:

If you click on the picture you can see a bigger version.  The print is all sorts of different desserts.  Plus I made my bias tape to edge it.  (I'm getting a lot of use out of that thrifted tablecloth... one apron, two ties, and now several yards of bias tape.)  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  The trouble is, I only had enough of the fabric to make one shirt.  So, into the shop it goes.
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I just realized that I never linked here to the last three articles I had published on the wonderful web.  Here they are:

Grade School:  10 Things Your Kids Can and Should Do
Middle School:  10 Things Your Kids Can and Should Do
High School: 10 Things Your Kids Can and Should Do

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