k meeting, awesome toy and purple shirt

We had Esme's meeting at school today. It was less than an hour long and quite formal. I think we got across that we are very very glad for the progress she made this past year, but that she has gotten to the point she will be 'ok' in a regular kindergarten, sans some adjusting time. She will continue to have some speech and language services, but hopefully 'screen out' of the speech after a few months in K. She had already reached 80-100 percent on all of the goals for her IEP during this year.

A forest log playset for Esme, based on something we saw online. The bunny can fit inside the log to sleep.  She says it is an awesome toy - and all of the scraps were already in my workstation. The green is the skirt cut off of her daffodill dress from a few years back - which was almost entirely recycled into other projects. Other toys she wanted me to make : a 'fireplace' set with logs and fire. A whale with a stomach cavity that could swallow things and cough them back up. We bought her lincoln logs a while back but she wasn't interested in them then - but she is getting very interested in them again, now.

This is more of a tunic shirt than a dress - but it is the same as the last few I had made - Butterick 3600 circa 1960s with a 10 inch skirt instead of 20... seeing how tall she is getting I should advance that up to about 14 inches for the next thing I make for her.

nouveau shirt

This was made with some fabrics on hand - started back a few weeks ago when I had made a skirt for myself. I finished the sleeves and facings today - but did not put on the buttons it is planned for.  I want to wear it and let it 'relax' a bit before I decide where the buttons should fall.  The front flaps are very stiff still as they are lined with a thick green Kona cotton and the lighter cream fabric is a Japanese rabbit pattern fabric leftover from way back when I made Esme's rabbit pants.  The Japanese fabrics are a very fine thread count and it can be felt when it is worn and in how it sews.  The 'nouveau' fabric is something slightly lighter in weight that was on the clearance rack nearly a year ago... it helped stretch the rabbit fabric into something useable as it was a scant yard to begin with.

It fits fairly well - slightly shorter sleeves and there is a bit of a shoulder-to-neck gap that would be nice to fix in an upcoming version. You can see the gap in the first picture where it sort of 'rises' right at the top of the arm.  I'm a bit wider in the shoulders than most people - so I would need to widen the pattern there and taper it back towards the front differently.  The body pattern was made from an old sleeveless shirt I cut apart - and the sleeves were added on and approximated out of a shirt pattern I had in my stash this morning.

scrap shirt

Amy Butler scrap fabric and two similar green scraps


dog hug
crooked buttonband, but it works


She is officially inches taller than the doorknob


Comparison: Last September 21
several inches below it!

Her added height is showing everywhere - needing lots of new pants, being able to sit on the potty unassisted, reaching the kitchen sink faucet handles when standing on her stool (she couldn't do this last week, but surprised me today by turning it on, washing her hands and turning it off before I crossed the room to help). She will probably be getting her own breakfast before the end of the year, complete with milk in the cereal bowl.

I have hopes that these shirts might teach her in the future how to button her own clothes on... Most of her clothes up until now have been back zippers, which is not easy for a child to 'self-help' on.

Another camp shirt from the wardrobe pattern. It was made with scraps of several fabrics. The actual buttonband was added on afterward because the facings were too narrow to provide reinforcement for the buttonholes. The machine-made and hand-reinforced buttonholes still look awful up-close, until the buttons are actually buttoned, then they look serviceable. This one is a little short ...probably because of the seam on the front pieces. I will need to try to extend the length to make something that doesn't show her belly when she is running around!

Other: We went to the donut shop, hardware store, a shoe outlet and the drug store trying to make up time to get to the health food store when it opened at ten. That was a lot of wandering around... and Esme was very good during most of that... After I picked up my red lentils at the health food store (so glad they had them as no one else did!) we went to the library. Esme copied what another girl did on the computers bit for bit for a while, and it impressed me, too, as she had not been able to do some of those operations in that game before. She got pretty upset after some young boys came in with a grandma that did not want them to play but wanted them to sit and read. Esme got the youngest boy in big trouble when the grandma went to get another book, so we had to leave too, in a ruckus of tears and screaming on Esme's part. *sigh* And it had been going so well up until then! I really wish we had a children's library where the rule wasn't "inside voices." It is so very hard to keep them there when they don't get to see other children very often.

We are home now, and hopefully the rest of the day will be more relaxing!

pattern used:

Simplicity 4969, 1950s era, undated

Blue dot dress

Awesome pictures taken by Mark :)
Fabric by Nauvoo Quilt Company, one of the pieces I bought as part of my Mother's Day present ;) And this is why it was for Mother's Day, so I can have a dress to put on her and see again and again :)

New blue dot dress made this morning before we went to town. The collar on this one is tight, almost 'perfect'... so it probably will not fit for as long as the 'too big' one. I'll need to make at least one more before I cut into the Hong Kong fabric. Hopefully I can find a happy medium.

NOTES:
Would you believe it was this old favorite again... without the back darts and the skirt was measured out to be exactly 9 inches long and 'whatever was left' wide out of exactly one half yard. There was about a 4 inch square left and that was it.


Simplicity 8714, copyright 1970

The finished product really does look like the girl in the bottom right hand corner.

OTHER: Esme is really showing how grown up she is lately. She can open the fridge and get something AND close it and come back to us. She can do the matching game and the puzzle games on Starfall but still gets a little stuck on the Alphabet Maze (letter K) once in a while... but she is starting to understand the arrow keys on that one, too. She is so stubborn - she keeps trying the same one over and over because she REALLY wants to get it right. She also just understands more than she did before, thinks things through better and her imagination games are getting even MORE complex and interesting.

Another short sleeved shirt

This is the same thing as the 'animal town' shirt from yesterday - but it has two tiny darts added to the back to try to gather a little fabric in at the shoulders. I also have taken pictures of all of the steps up to the zipper and hem - which I am going to do at work today. I am going to post the step-by-step on burdastyle :) I think this is a really practical and easy to sew dress/top and combines elements of all of the patterns I've really liked over the past year.



Esme was such a good girl while I sewed. For part of the time she tried to sit in my lap (pinning in the bodice lining) then she stuck her toes in the bin of buttons she was playing with, and then she started building elaborate block towers all by herself across the room while watching Muppet Show. I always feel guilty when I'm home and not playing with her - but I needed to sew while the light was good, as I'm on closing shifts this week.

Kangaroo shirt with pocket

Finished the kangaroo shirt this morning and it fits well. It is a size 3 to 4, which is leaving a little room to grow. I made it as short as possible in the skirt area, so it is more a smock shirt than a dress. It is also very cool for her, with room to let air up underneath it and as thin of fabrics as possible. The whole thing cost less than 5 dollars for materials - but took probably about four hours to make over the course of a few days. And there is enough of the two white fabrics to make something else with another fabric in place of the yellow gingham :)

The kangaroo embroidery was just for fun - and it will probably tear up some over the washings the shirt will endure. But the idea was too good to pass up :)



Here is the pattern used - it is Simplicity 8170 from 1977. It's something I got from a lot of patterns off of Ebay back when she was too small for this size. It is really for a nightgown or pajama set - but I was more interested in the shape of the top part of the shirt (bodice) and the size.


Drawing with Grandma


Investigating the hydrangeas
didn't let her pull any off - but she said they were pretty


Trying to ride our tolerant and very gentle white dog 'Bunny'

Esme's proud of her doggy, the dog just wants to be rescued : "Please? Hey, you're posting this on the Internet, aren't you?"

After lunch she asked Daddy 'Daddy, go fishing?' hehe but he had already been fishing so she didn't understand that. When Mom is at work she always goes fishing with Daddy after lunch! Then she was sitting on her floor pillow in her room watching SpongeBob.

Later we went to the lake with the truck and Daddy fished for a while. He tried to talk Mama into fishing too, but I wasn't in the mood. So, we all went for a swim. Esme wasn't too happy about that - she got out as soon as we let her and grabbed everyone's shoes saying 'on shoes NOW all done go truck - you Daddy on shoes NOW' etc etc... so we drug her back in the water for another short time - then we all went home. I'm happy to say the kangaroo shirt survived all of that (and chicken and crackers I found in the pocket after lunch, too!!) It is now freshly washed and folded on her clothes table, looking in good condition and ready for another day of hard use in the future...