Recharged

 

Oh my gosh, this working full-time thing is totally exhausting!  I don’t know how I did it pre-kids.  Well, I guess that was exactly it.  It was pre-kids.  When I came home, I could just veg, not worry about getting kids fed and to bed.  And I could sleep soundly through the night, not worry about middle-of-the-night wake ups (nowadays if it’s not the 11 month old, then it’s the 3 year old because something is scary, or he can't find his blanket or his baby panda).

Anyway, I finished a huge project at work last week, and Thursday night, I was wiped out.  After putting the kids to bed, I fell asleep at 8pm, despite the 20,000 things on my to-do list.  The baby girl only got up once that night, so I got 11 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep.  I had the next day off, so I took a nap when the baby girl was napping.  Basically, I slept at every opportunity.  And it was glorious.  I’d been running on empty, and my body just shut down and said, You need to refuel!

The funny thing is despite all the sleeping I did, I felt so productive last  weekend.  I guess I just had more energy to spend time with the kids AND get some cleaning and organizing done.  And I got some sewing in, too!

Remember the red ruffle dress?  I wanted to make a purple one for a friend’s daughter.  I had it cut out for a while now, and I finally had enough energy to change the thread on the machine and get going!  I thought the neckline on the red dress was a little big, so I added an inch to the neckline when I made the purple one.  Guess what?  Too small!  (Darn you, necklines!)  I tried it on the baby girl, and I couldn’t even get it over her head with a little stretch. 

It wasn’t too bad to fix, though.  I just cut off the first row of ruffles and sewed another row of ruffles under the remaining two.  Then, I sewed on a new neckline.  During it all, I found myself calculating head circumferences and factoring pi into it all.  Who knew sewing involved so much math! 

After I made the red dress, I found this tutorial on how to use the gathering foot on your serger to make ruffles.  So, I tried it for the purple dress.  Using the gathering foot was so much faster but it didn’t ruffle as much as I’d like, less than 1.5x rather than 2x.  I might have to fiddle with the settings more.  And who knew that you can use the gathering foot to ruffle one piece of fabric AND attach it to another.  Will have to try that when I’m feeling more daring! 

I also made a diaper cover to go with this purple dress with a pattern from Dana Made It.  Loved this pattern!  It was free, and so easy!  I have leggings I want to make, too.  (A girl's got to have choices for pairing with her purple dress.)

Hope she likes it--only 2 months after her birthday...