'Toes in the Dirt!

We interup this sewing season to make room for GARDENING!  After what feels like the longest winter on the planet (it wasn't - it just felt that way!) it seems that not only has spring arrived just a little early but it has that sense of being here to stay.

So on that glorious note I took a bit of a risk and tilled up my garden plot to make a place for tomatos. Four Celebrity plants and four Better Boy.  If all goes well I should have glorious tomatos just a hair before the summer season officially hits on June 20th. 

Of all the things I love - and there are many, I am crazy for the glorious abundance that defines summer.  Fresh vegetables, sweet and juicey fruit, tall glasses of frosty home made lemonade, iced tea with mint from the garden. On and on the list goes.

Planting tomatos today is my welcome statement - welcome glorious, tender, hopefilled spring that always, always to the eternal praise of God, melts into my favorite season - summer!

Sweet Satisfaction

I can't even express my joy over finishing this dress (Simplicity 3833).  My dad bought me a sewing machine when I was sixteen along with a dress pattern and some fabric.  My sweet girlfriend (whose name happens to be Joy) and her mom taught me a few basics and I was off and running. 

In my sewing naivete I was fearless in the projects I dived into. It wasn't until I got a little older and began to realize that how a garment fit and all the little finishing details like topstitching, interfacing, drape and so on really did matter. After that realization sewing lost its joy as one garment after another did not meet my new eye for perfection.

A few years ago I read the book, "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell in which he dissects what makes one person achieve phenomenal success over someone else who aspires to but doesn't.  In case after case it turned out that practice, about ten thousand hours, made the difference.  It wasn't talent nearly so much as drive and desire - combined with logging in practice time.

So after YEARS of avoiding garment sewing, I just decided I would get started putting in my "ten thousand hours" making garments.  I decided in advance I would not get mad or frustrated if something I made wasn't perfect.  So...after a number of failures, each of which taught me something - here I am wearing something I made that I would actually wear out in public!

JOY!