How I celebrate a birthday...

Ok - as I mentioned yesterday, Ryan went to Adventure-land for his birthday and I celebrated by sewing from roughly noon on.

I started my sewing gig with 2 bags for soldiers. Same fabric for both. For one I did the serging edges, the other I made the original way with french seams. I finally understand how it's done! and it was SEW easy... Will share that tomorrow in a tutorial... I took a bunch of pics as I put them together.Having knocked those out in only 30 minutes, I started in on a hat that I think may or may not be suitable for either the county fair or the state fair. I'm signed up for both. Or just as a practice because it's been a while since I made one...

In my fabric stash I have some black pin stripe and also some black microsuede-ish fabric of the same weight. I also had some authentic alligator skin leather (seriously) that we had purchased at Gatorland in Florida in 1999. Yep - 11 year old alligator hide... PERFECT for this project!So I made my lined hat. Crown, bonnet and underflap with the striped and plain for the top of the flap. I miscalculated the underflap when I cut it, so I had to improvise a triangular piece of plain black. Hope it looks intentional! On the upper flap on the back, I sewed the strips of gator hide into it.Then after looking at it, thought it looked a bit goth. So I braided a couple feet of some facing ribbon that I have tons of and made a little ribbon to fit around the head.

I was still feeling ambitious, so I looked thru my patterns to get inspired. I found this Taos skirt that I had gotten from my ASG sewing group free table. I had been meaning to make this for a long time, but never got around to it and never seemed to have the right fabric for it. I still don't. So I made it anyway.

Out of some stretchy pale blue/almost grey fabric that probably would have been better suited for a pair of pants. Oh well. I made it for Meri and she wore it to church on Sunday morning, loving it. It did turn out cute. But I forgot to take a picture, so take my word for it.That skirt went together so quickly, that I'm planning another one for Maddy from some lighter weight cotton stuff that I found and will start cutting on that tonight. If all goes well, I may make a few more and sell on Etsy. We'll see...

After that I was STILL feeling ambitious! It pays to send your kids off to a $ movie with their dad for the afternoon.. and of course your son to a theme park... So I pulled out the top that I made for Meri last week and ironed on a rhinestone-ish guitar patch that I'd purchased probably over a year ago. I had just fitted it and made a couple modifications to make it fit better around the arm holes during the week, so it was prime to be worn for Sunday. And she did. It didn't match the skirt I made her, so she wore this over capris the rest of the day.I have Monday off from work due to July 4th holiday, so if we can get the girls to finish their 4H photography projects over the weekend then I might be able to make a couple hats for Etsy too... Wish me luck!