Creative Update

Tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day, and as a rule, I try to fill my children's pots and pans (see a previous blog post on that) with fruit, a small amount of chocolate and something handmade. My plan was to make them some adorable knitted animal finger-puppets and a zippered pouch to store them. Yeah well, that was before I decided to knit my boys new holiday sweaters. Total knitting time-suck. This mama only has so many hours in the day she can devote to her pointy sticks. (More on these sweaters when they're finished!)

Sweaters in process.

Being the project-oriented gal that I am, I soon hatched a plan B. A simple sewing project. My boys are always trying to wear my "big people" aprons in the kitchen so I decided it was time they had some of their own. For a couple years now I have been eyeing the free child's apron pattern from Sew Liberated so I went with that design. Total smart move. Easy and turned out super-cute.

Aprons are the perfect opportunity for novelty fabric.

The two best features of this pattern is the elastic at the neck strap and the velcro at the hip for fastening the waist strap. Both of these features ensure that a child can put this on without assistance. I love that. All-in-all I think it took me about 3 hours to make both aprons. I will try to update this post with a picture of them modeled by little boys after they are gifted tomorrow.

I feel really, really at home doing applique. Who knew?

And of course, the quilt sewing goes on. I am on block 3 of the 6 applique blocks required to complete what I need to do in order to assemble the neverending quilt. Lucky for this project, it doesn't get too neglected during the holidays because it's not "sneaky sewing" (see above aprons that had to be sewn in the wee hours when little people were fast asleep). My sewing area is next to the playroom so I can sew while keeping an eye on the shenanigans that go on in that den of crazy.

When the holidays are over, my main thing is going to be getting this quilt finished. Because I have two other ones to start! Hopefully I've learned enough during this process to make the next two go faster. :)

–Cassandra

UPDATE: Some quick snapshots of the aprons this morning....pictures are a little blurry because the kids were so jumpy!