Alas, I was trying to post some cute pictures of the dresses I made for the Littles (little girls) today. We have been barely getting by with two or so old white muslin peasant dresses for two little girls for two days each week at the renaissance festival. Needless to say, white is not an acceptable color to wear to one, let alone if you're still a babe in arms, much less a roll-in-the-dirt-all-day two year old. This has been itching at the back of my mind for a few weeks, and today I did something about it.

I made Ivy a dress out of a fat quarter. Listen up, quilters! I did say a fat quarter. She's a little girl all right, but how did I manage that? I folded the fabric in half, then chopped off about four inches for sleeves (cut that strip in half). Then I cut the larger piece into four equal rectangles (about 12 inches by four inches). I picked out some coordinating fabric from the stash and sewed a three-inch strip between two of each of the fat quarter ones. Then I stacked them all with tops aligning and cut out an armhole for a peasant blouse--kind of a quarter circle shape. When I sewed it all up and elasticized the arm and neck holes and hemmed, Ivy had a cute little dress with red geometric bunny Japanese print with a cool yellow-orange racing stripe down the front and back.

I finished a similar dress for Maggie, but for hers, I sewed a contrast flounce and sleeves instead of the racing stripe. And of course, hers took more than a fat quarter to make. Maggie's dress has a soft green 40's dot print with black paisley sleeves and flounce around the hem. I'll try one more time to post them, before I have to go pack and leave for Muskogee for the weekend. We're hoping to make church for an hour on Sunday, so I need to pack non-ren clothes for that.

No, it's just not going to work--I'll have to try at Mom and Dad's house.

It's Tuesday again...not that it means anything. I was amused to see the reference to the game "Burning Crusades" on the Blogger front page. Our family jokes that "burning crusades" sounds like something viral you'd pick up at a Renaissance Festival Port-a-Potty.

But I seriously digress. This week the guys are all working on Brent and Vea's house, so the whole gang's here. Hollis is having the time of his life, considering all the help he's being, but Maggie just doesn't understand why her dad can't carry her around all day.

I'm trying to help Michelle sew some bodices to restock our booth at Muskogee Renfest. We are all sold out of any "women's" sizes. Anything larger than about a 33 inch waist is in short supply. Chelle and Tyler went to Springfield yesterday and got some new fabric to use, and I finally got my serger verbally abused into submission. It is making the most beautiful rolled hem now.

Today I'm trying to cook enough to make up for the massive amounts of food our family has eaten here lately. I made two batches of bread: a foccacia and some Flaxseed sandwich bread. Both are from Rose Levy Berenbaum's Bread Bible that Lucy let me borrow (with thanks). She has good recipes and I haven't made anything of hers I didn't like yet. Supper tonight will be green chili pork with homemade corn tortillas and refried beans. Hopefully it will be good.

Starting Over

Wow, a month ago I didn't see any need for a blog, and now I have two. I'm not the techie type, and I don't have much interest in a bunch of strange people seeing the intimate details of our everyday lives, but I am hoping to use this as a diary of sorts, to keep track of my days and my progress. I started this one because I was having no luck on Yahoo 360 displaying a list of some wonderful sites I have found.

I guess this will be a way for friends to see pics of our kids, and a way for me to share recipes and projects that I'm working on.