Goodbye 2009

I can not even begin to explain my long absence. The one year mark of Michael's death was a bigger slam than I could ever have anticipated. The holidays came and went with all of us still struggling to sort out what our new 'normal' is going to be without Michael. I am grateful beyond measure to my six children who do so much everyday to fill in the gaps. This year also marked the last Christmas outfit I will make for one of my girls using a children's size pattern. My youngest daughter is almost twelve and is just outgrowing girl's size patterns. This outfit was made from Simplicity 4518 (Lizzie McGuire) and she seems to be quite pleased with it. I will try to post of picture of her wearing it if I can get her to sit still long enough.


The jacket is 100% cotton velvet (stash left over from her oldest sister's wedding 10 years ago!) and the skirt a poly/rayon Asian brocade. She will probably wear the jacket with jeans the next few months as I fear she will grow out of it before next fall.

I've been busy getting class samples ready for teaching next year. I like to size check all my patterns so these next pictures are different size versions of the four piece set previously shown .






The navy blue set is made from feather weight corduroy paired with a navy floral brushed twill. I completely interfaced all the jacket pattern pieces with fuseable baby interfacing from Farmhouse Fabrics (www.farmhousefabrics.com). It gave the corduroy just the right amount of thickness to make it a pleasure to embroider on. Happy New Year to all my blog friends.