Green Day

Alexander is terribly concerned about his lack of green church attire and the fact that St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday this year. He absolutely did not want to get pinched but just wasn't sure what he was going to wear! It was a real conundrum. 

So I joked that Miriam could make him a tie really quick since she's our resident seamstress.

To my surprise/delight she said that she would! So we looked up a few patterns and she was less than impressed to find out that a necktie involves very little machine sewing and a whole lot of hand stitching. I told her that I would do the hand stitching if she would do everything else—all the cutting and ironing and machine work. And we had ourselves a deal (though to be fair I ended up doing a whole lot of the ironing)!

This little project soon became two green ties (one for Benjamin and one for Alexander, since neither of them have green church attire, while the girls have plenty of options when it comes to skirts and dresses and things). When Miriam saw how much green fabric she had left after making the ties, however, the project ballooned into two green skirts (one for Zoë and one for Phoebe) and two green ties (one for Benjamin and one for Alexander).

It took us longer than we thought, but we managed to finish it all in one day (and it cost us nothing because it was all fabric I picked up from our Buy Nothing Group). We also learned a lot!

 We still need to get ties for the boys for Grandpa and Darla's wedding. Early on in these wedding discussions, Darla mentioned that she'd like the granddaughters to all somewhat match and Grandpa joked about Miriam having time to sew each of them a dress. But since Grandpa and Darla went on their first day in January, got engaged in February, and are getting married in March...that didn't feel like enough time to make dresses for four people. 

Skirts? Maybe. 

Dresses? Absolutely not! 

Those things have sleeves and bodices and...nope. 

So we ordered new Easter dresses for all the girls, which somewhat coordinate (turns out, buying matching dresses for a 2-year-old, 8-year-old, 14-year-old, and 16-year-old is...a little tricky). We haven't yet gotten ties for the boys, though, and I'm thinking that maybe we could make them instead.

But that might just be hubris talking. The ties were actually more time consuming than the skirts (which Miriam did entirely on her own...so maybe that's why they felt less time consuming to me)! Anyway, we'll see...maybe we'll get some matching material and make it happen.

Or as Captain Picard would say, "Make it sew!"