Making Monthly: June

I started this series hoping it would reignite some motivation to write on the blog. While it’s helping a lot in that area, it hasn’t, unfortunately, magically produced endless hours available for sewing. We hosted visitors at the beginning of the month, just got a new batch of visitors this week, and my kids are out of school. This is the exact wrong formula to get projects completed and so it’s probably not too surprising that I finished zero sewing projects this month. But here is what I have worked on:

I sewed a bit on each of these two tees. The pink one only needs to be hemmed. I was very proud of the neckband on this one! Unfortunately the fit is pretty terrible. Since having my baby, I’ve been a bit measure averse, if that’s a thing, and, rather than figure out what size I currently am, I just took my usual patterns and tried to be generous in cutting and scant in the seams. And let me just say that that method was not successful. At all. On the white tee, I got so far as sewing the shoulders and then inserting the neckband, which is too tight. So both of those things lead me to nope out of the tees without finishing them. They will get finished eventually, just not this month.

I also worked a bit on this Ballet Bow Skirt from Matchy Matchy Sewing Club. Last month, I got it cut out and assembled the ties. This month I was able to insert a waistband so that I could try it on and get the placement I needed for where to sew the side seams to and where to put the bows. As I’ve been working on it, I’ve worried that I picked the wrong fabric, but even if it’s not the best match of fabric to pattern, I think the skirt will still get worn.

And that’s it for sewing! Probably less than three hours total! Crazy, huh? Seasons of life, I suppose!

I did do a craft, which was making these felt flowers!

For Mother’s Day, I got a felt flower making kit and my girls and I worked on it to make the bouquet pictured above. I had a really fun time making it, but I was frustrated by the felt provided in the kit. It was stiff and difficult to manipulate, which probably made it really easy for the seller to cut out on a Cricut machine, but hard to mold it into a more believable flower. Anyway, I was glad for the handholding experience, but I do think I want to try going rogue in felt flower making with just myself, some scissors and some felt. Things are about to get wild, I know! I bought some supplies and I guess we’ll see what happens!

With July upon us, I’ve been thinking about how some marketers like to use the “Christmas in July” theme and how that might be a good reminder. Maybe now is the time to start my Christmas sewing so that I actually finish in time to enjoy it all through December? I do want to do cross stitch charms for the stockings I made last year and maybe I should get that going now…

For books, this month I finished three. My favorite of those was probably Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser. I really enjoyed reading it but the ending…I feel like…it could have ended a different way. That’s all I’ll say about it because of spoilers but overall I did enjoy it!

I’ve also been reading Holes out loud to my kids at night and it has been one of the highlights of my day! I go in and out with the habit of reading aloud to my kids at night, but someone gave us a copy of this, so I dove in. Louis Sachar was my favorite author as a kid (yes, I was one of those kids who had a favorite author in elementary school, ha!), so reading this again (this time with my kids) has been a huge treat! We’re going to have a party and watch the movie once we finish the book!

Anyway, that’s June! We’ll have more summer days and more visitors in July, so I don’t imagine I’ll have much more time to sew, but hopefully I can crank out something to show you guys! Thanks for reading!