Thursday, June 19, 2014

I try to set one night a week aside to just sew. Or craft. Or do anything but clean and pay bills and do the things that really need to get done and would be the responsible thing to do. It actually takes discipline to do this. I would think I would have no problem diving into a project and neglecting the unfolded laundry. But it actually takes effort to stop myself from cleaning and just pushing everything aside to make room for my sewing machine on the table. Tonight I sewed with every monster truck my three year old owns. Which is twelve. He spent the evening gathering them up from around the house and put them in a nice circle on the table. I worked around them, both because I think he will be happy to see them all still circled up when he wakes up in the morning and also because cleaning is a slippery slope and I have to be very strict about not going down it on my no cleaning nights or the next thing I know I have a clean table, or folded laundry, but nothing creative to show for the night. And being creative is good for my soul. And as a busy mom of three youngens I need to do things that are good for my soul to continue doing things that are good for theirs.

Tonight I decided to finish the Superman cape I started 3 weeks ago. It took less than an hour to do, and I have I'm sure spent more time than that moving it from place to place these past three weeks to "get it out of the way" as well as talking to my son about how I will get it done as soon as I can, but so goes my life these days. It was a simple project but one that I am excited about because I know that my 3 year old will love it. It's fun to make things for him because his expressions of excitement and gratitude are so rewarding. I once brought home a spray bottle from the dollar store that gave me days of "Thank you mama for getting this for me". (I had actually gotten it just so I could have a spray bottle to use for this and that, but I didn't have the heart to tell him and I let him have it as his own and sucked up all the gratitude I could from it.) His love language is definitely "gifts", which is frustrating at times when he has his eye on something expensive, or when there is always something else that he would like. But as the spray bottle shows, he is pretty easy to please. And when the "gift" he is after is something I can make for him then the reward of making it for him is twice as sweet.

Anyway, back to the cape. I used the tutorial from howdoesshe.com. And I added a logo. I did a lot of searching to learn about Superman and I learned that he doesn't actually have his logo on his cape. But I learned this after I had already cut out and appliqued the logo, and my son gets excited when he sees the logo and all things superhero so I just went with it and put it on the cape. I printed a logo from the internet (don't remember where exactly I found it) and used Steam a Seem to attache the red S to the yellow background. Then I used more Steam a Seam to attach the logo to the cape. Then I stitched it on, which took some time, and almost a whole spool of thread, and tried my patience at times. It is certainly one of those things that you just shouldn't look to closely at but from a distance you can tell it is the superman logo and that is the important part. After the logo was appliqued on I continued following the directions from the tutorial on howdoesshe. I liked this tutorial because it was so basic and simple and not overwhelming. She didn't even pin the two pieces together! I love this. This is so how I work. And it is how three year olds work too. It's actually one of the things I love most about three year olds. The only thing I added (besides the logo) is that I did a finishing stitch around the entire outside. I did this for two reasons. The first is that I hate sewing openings closed by hand. It just seems like more work than using the machine. Even if it means sewing a few yards by machine versus a few inches by hand. I know it probably isn't, but it is how I think. It's the same reasoning that makes me carry all my groceries from the car in one load, even though it hurts my hands and I drop things that I later have to pick up. But still I do it every time. I also thought that finishing the edges would give it a, well, more finished look. But that might have actually been a mistake because I think it may have actually just highlighted my wrecklessness with the way I sewed the edges together. But again, the intended audience here is a three year old and I know that he will never notice the specifics of the edges so it was pretty easy for me to let it go. I actually pretty much just raced through this project. Patience is a virtue, just not one of mine. At least not when I am sewing. Which is why I love a project like this every now and then when the details don't really matter. It is so freeing to just race through a project and not get hung up on the little things. Or, frankly in this case, even the big things. God bless three year olds and their imaginations and lack of high standards for detail and reality.

I'm really excited to give it to him. But it will have to wait because I don't want to give it to him until I finish the tutu that I have been promising my two year old for months. I know things don't always have to be fair. And really since we added a third child 6 weeks ago the fairness in the house has been pretty much non-existant. Which is what makes me want to be fair in this instance. So, hopefully I can whip out a tutu in the 30 minutes that it should take to make a tutu for a two year old. I do already have the material. I have had it for months. I adore buying material. I almost feel that just by purchasing the material I am completing the project, which of course is far from the truth and the reason that I have so much material and so few finished projects. Sigh. Maybe one day I will have lots of finished projects and not enough material, but that is not the current season of my life. But maybe with each "No Clean Night" I will get one step closer. As long as I stay away from the fabric store first.