2nd sewing lesson and Snuggies

Yesterday was the second sewing lesson for Ms. G. I'm quite impressed with how well she is catching on. It helps that she is not too intimidated and is very willing to jump right in and try new things.
She arrived at my house with two yards of fabric and a request to make PJ pants. She even had her mom wash the fabric ahead of time, just like she was supposed to! (Wish my kids listened as good as she does!)
Sewing PJ pants was the perfect opportunity to introduce her to patterns. We went through some of the basic pattern instructions and what some of the symbols meant and how to read, cut, and pin the pattern.

After showing her how to fold her fabric and place the pattern, I pretty much just let her pin and cut it herself.




She's got quite the attention span for an eight year old and I was sure to commend her for it.
Because I wanted to make sure the stitch was nice and tight and would last more than a few washings, I decided to let her use the big machine. She was a little intimidated at first, but after a couple trial runs on some scrap fabric, she was confident enough to sew the actual PJs.
I didn't get a picture of her on the big machine (sorry Ms. G's mom) because I didn't want to leave her on the bigger, faster machine unsupervised.


Perfect fit!
I promised that since we had enough fabric left over, next week we'll make some matching PJ's for her baby doll!


Another easy to sew project that I made for Christmas presents are Snuggies. I don't know what my kids' obsession with these things are all about. They haven't watched regular TV in ages, so I can't blame the commercials. They did, however see the "As seen on TV" aisle at Wal-mart where they stock all the weird infomercial items you see on late night television. There between the Pillow Pets and the Pedi-Eggs were the slim selection of Snuggies available only in their signature color of Royal Blue. Twenty bucks for an ugly piece of fleece with arm holes?! It wasn't even anti-pill fleece!
I tried discouraging them by pointing out all the flaws the Snuggies had, but it didn't stop them from adding them to their Christmas lists.
A few weeks later when I made my JoAnn's list I added some yards of fleece and prepared myself to create a Snuggie pattern from scratch. To my surprise, I found a pattern at JoAnn's!
I also lucked out and got the fleece for 40% off- good day all around!


If your kids beg you for one of these silly things, I recommend making one yourself. Not only will they look cuter, but I'm pretty sure they'll last longer too!