Child's Apron

I made an apron for my niece with pockets for a pencil and paper to take orders.

Here's what I did.

I used an apron I had made for my 4 year old as a pattern, but I had plenty of this material to use just one kind of fabric, and I wanted a different shape at the bottom.  I folded the doubled up fabric and the apron and stacked them.

I cut 1/2" bigger using the outside top corner, waist, and length for references, and curved in between.

See the 2 layers unfolded?

I took one layer and pinned ribbons in place for the neck (about 16") and the side ties (length depends on child, but I made mine plenty long so they can be wrapped around and tied in front).  I heat sealed my ribbon ends by melting them with a lighter--it will give the ends of the ties from becoming freyed and the insides from freying and pulling out.

Then I stacked the other layer on top, right sides together and sewed the perimeter with a 1/2" seam allowance and left about a 8" opening.  I left it open on a curve which was tricky.  If I did it over I would have left it open on the less curvy bottom.

I clipped curves and corners before I turned it right side out so it wouldn't pucker.

I top stitched around the edges (and hid my opening this way without hand stitching--I just tucked the edges in and pinned them in place.  It would have been so much easier if I had chosen a straight edge to leave open).

I chose a contrasting fabric for a rectangular pocket and long strip that I folded in half and gathered along raw edges.  I sewed the rectangle in half along open sides (leaving a whole to turn), then clipped corners, turned and top stitched one of the long sides.

Hmm...unfortunately blogger didn't rotate this picture.

Then I sewed a ribbon on the apron to make a stem, spiraled my ruffle into a flower and machine sewed it on in a somewhat wonky fashion. Last, I sewed the pocket onto the apron where the pocket wasn't top stitched and sewed along one of the stripes to make a small pocket for a pencil and a wide pocket for a notepad.

Christmas Dresses

Our church's Christmas program was last night.  Even though our little one wasn't in the program, we dressed her up too.  I had to get pretty low so I could see her face under that huge bow!

It's hard to get everyone looking in the same direction at the same time.

Doesn't little H look ready to answer a question?

Here is Z's class singing Jesus Loves Me and quoting the first part of John 3:16.  Z can say the whole thing and had a hard time not sharing the fact with everyone...but we are pretty proud of her!

Then there was a birthday party for Jesus afterward, and H wanted to show off her candle blowing skills.  Actually, she hasn't managed to blow out a candle out yet, but she looks pretty cute with her lips stuck out.

Gingerbread House

We red Jan Brett's The Gingerbread Baby this weekend at my mom's house.  Fortunately I had purchased a gingerbread house kit at Aldi's for $7 that was waiting at home to be put together!

By the way Jan Brett has a neat website full of printables, coloring pages, and online activities that features her beautiful artwork and goes along with her books.

So we cleaned up a spot on the table just big enough to put it together.

We hot glue the gingerbread pieces together at my house like we did when I was a little girl.  Who wants to eat gingerbread and candy that has been sitting on the counter for a month anyway (besides, my germaphobic husband doesn't think we should be ingesting the dust that gathers on it...actually, that does sound kind of gross).

The 1 1/2 year old got in on the candy action too...she handed me candy to stick on.  She tried sticking the candy on herself, but she ended up sticking her fingers in the frosting instead.  She thought it was a lot of fun to put candy in a little bowl and dump it out over and over again...1 year olds really don't need toys do they?

She has decided this is her picture face the last few days...I usually don't ask for poses, so I'm not sure where she came up with the idea.

And of course when she is done with that face, she has herself a good laugh.