Kids Clothes Sewing Week - Day 5 and Owen Update

 

You might have noticed that I didn't do a day 4 post. I did get in my hour of sewing yesterday, but I didn't finish a project or get any pictures. Yesterday was already going to be a busy day with Connor's driver's Ed lessons in the afternoon and a bridal shower Devon and I attended in the evening, but it ended up a lot busier than I had planned. I ended up taking a very lethargic Owen to the doctor's office for some tests. The kids have been passing a stomach bug and he caught it. Only instead of his lasting for 24 hours like everyone else, he got really sick. He was refusing his food and gagging/choking/ throwing up  for 5 days. Yesterday I was having trouble getting even fluids down him, so after several phone calls to the regular doctor and the specialists, we headed to the local doctor's office. It seems that the illness wasn't playing nice with the ketogenic diet and making Owen much sicker than he would have been otherwise. Especially since his body was still adjusting to the recent ratio change we made to the diet. It sent him into acidosis which made his feel even sicker. Once we figured out what was going on, I was able to make a few changes in the diet, including feeding him more baking soda than usual and giving him a few extra carbs. His potassium levels were low too, so we've increased his supplement for a few days. Today he's eaten all but one of his meals and is drinking about twice as much as yesterday. He's even played outside for a while. Hopefully he'll be back to normal meals by tomorrow although the extra baking soda may become a permanent fixture. 

Anyway, I finally got a chance to finish this little tunic today. I just needed to hem it and do the buttons and buttonholes. then Morgan and I headed outside for a little, extremely windy photo shoot. At least it wasn't raining today! I used THIS gorgeous little French pattern. I bought it last year, but hadn't gotten around to sewing it yet. When we found this sweet cotton lawn at the fabric store, I knew it was meant for this top. The pattern comes in size 6 or size 8 and Morgan wears a 7, so I made the 8 for grow room. The six would have fit her, but just barely.

I just love all the little details on this pattern (I know, most of them don't show up in the pictures due to the print, but trust me, they're great!). It was still pretty simple to sew though. If you actually can read French, I'd say an advanced beginner could make this pattern, but if you don't read French I wouldn't try this if you don't have experience with plackets, collars, and bias bound sleeves. Yes, the pattern is in French.
So, I need to go now and finish a quilt for my Grandson's baby shower tomorrow. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, right?

Kid's Clothes Sewing Week -Day 3

 

Today's pictures are actually of the dress I finished yesterday around eleven at night. This dress is made from The Handmade Dress Miss Madeline pattern. The little birdie applique is a free download from the same site.

Morgan went to the fabric store with me and chose these fabrics all by herself! I think they work perfectly together.

If you've looked at my other sewing projects, you will have figured out that I love peasant style dresses for little girls. They are so simple to sew and easy to wear. The apron is a nice addition to this pattern.

Today, I'm working on a little french pattern. I bought it back before last spring's KCW along with two other patterns I made for Brenna. I hadn't managed to get Morgan's pattern sewn up, so that is my next project. I'm also hoping to get a couple more dresses cut out since I have a bridal shower to go to during my usual sewing time, so I'll have to be working on the fly to get in a whole hour tomorrow.

Kids Clothes Sewing Week -Day 2

Today I'm working on a dress out of THIS pattern, but I won't have it ready for pictures until at least tomorrow. These pictures are of the items I made yesterday. I used the Recess Raglan Pattern for the top and the dress. This pattern practically sews it's self, which is why I was able to finish 4 items in one day. Well, that and the fact that I didn't do any chores! For the dress I followed THIS Tutorial to create an A-line shape and then extended the length into a dress. The leggings are self drafted from a pair she already has that fit her well. I actually made two identical pairs of the leggings if you are only counting 3 items. The color goes so well with most of her clothes that I decided we needed 2 pair.

These are actually on backwards in this picture, they fit better the right way.

Kids Clothes Sewing Week -Day 1 {Spring 2014}

 

It's that time again!  Kids Clothes Sewing Week starts today. the challenge is to sew on kids clothes for at least an hour a day every day for one week. I participated in this for the first time last spring and made a whole wardrobe of clothing for Brenna. Then I skipped the summer challenge since we were crazy busy that week with a number of events including a wedding, two birthdays, getting two boys ready for camp (camp started the last day), and preparing for Owen's Ketogenic Diet initiation! Last Fall, I failed miserably. I missed a couple of days of sewing and did not complete a single project. This Winter, I decided to go easy on myself and entered the challenge with no expectations as to what I would accomplish other than sewing (including pattern tracing and cutting) for the hour each day. I managed to finish 3 projects other than buttons for one of the dresses since I didn't get a chance to go to the store and didn't have what I wanted in my button box.

Brenna "helping" me cut out fabric

This week, I got ambitious again and ended up with a huge pile of things to work on. Morgan is in desperate need of some new clothes and we haven't found what we want in the stores, so fabric shopping we went. I planned on getting a bunch of stuff cut out over the weekend so I could spend the week just sewing. It's the pattern tracing and cutting fabric that takes the longest and is hardest for me to do with the kids around. I can often find 15 minutes here and there throughout the day to sew if I have everything cut and ready to go. Due to an extra busy weekend and a few mishaps like not having any tape to put printable patterns together with and running out of printer paper, I didn't actually manage to get anything cut out over the weekend although I did finally get all my patterns in order!

Today I managed to get a top, a dress, and two pairs of leggings cut out with a little "help" from Brenna AND I managed to get them all sewn up! Yes, I sewed for more than an hour and NO, I won't be keeping that pace up all week, but it was a nice start seeing as though I was already behind (my self imposed) schedule. 

I did not, however, finish up in time to get pictures of Morgan in the clothes. That will have to wait until tomorrow. One of my goals this challenge is to get decent pictures of the stuff I make instead of crappy, dark, un-modeled photos taken on my dining room table at midnight. Hopefully the weather will cooperate for a photo shoot tomorrow!

Automatic Water!

Today, I finished cleaning and repairing the rabbit cages. Then Rod helped me move them into a straight line and I hooked up the automatic watering system while Rod built me a shelf for the bucket to sit on.

Lily, one of the pet bunnies.

I've been trying to streamline our little homestead and this automatic watering system will reduce our chores by quite a bit. Now we just need to keep the bucket filled and run a check on the system once a month or so and all the rabbits will have clean drinking water on demand. At least until it freezes, then we'll still have to fill the bottles a couple of times a day, but we usually don't have more than a week of freezing weather per year, so that won't be that big of a hassle. I still have the water bottles hooked up for now until I'm sure everyone is using the new drinking valves.

Dr. Midnight, the other pet bunny looking at one of the meat rabbits.

 The hardest part of setting up this watering system was simply ordering the right parts. I had to place two orders because I accidentally ordered some 3/16 parts and some 5/16 parts and didn't order any converters to go between the two systems. Other than that the only difficult thing was finding a place 1 -3 feet above the hoses to put the 5 gallon bucket for the water. Rod had to build me a new shelf for that.
My next step in this whole set up is to move the quail cages/ worm bins out of the green house and put them under the bunny cages, then set up their watering system. I'm setting them up on their own system because I accidentally ordered those 5/16 parts and I decided that it will just be easier to set up a separate 5/16 system than to try to merge the two together or to return the wrong parts. This actually works out better anyway since the quail and worms will be going inside during the winter and this way I can still have them on automatic water when I do move them. See, I guess I didn't really make a mistake after all!

Updates!

We've finally had a few days without rain, so I let the kids talk me into setting up the easel on the front porch. It took me several tries to get a picture of Owen actually looking at the camera.

I didn't get any better pictures of Morgan than this though. It's so fun watching the kids paint. Morgan actually paints pictures now. She had a girl and a train in her picture. Owen pretty much just mixed colors. He's fascinated with how many colors he can get just using the three primary colors. Brenna just makes a really wet mess.

This is the look I get when I ask Brenna to smile for me.

While the younger kids painted, Duncan was busy playing with his mini kite. He only got it tangled up in a tree once.

We have been busy, busy, busy around here. We're getting the garden ready and cleaning and re-arranging the animal areas. I've been cleaning up the rabbit cages and making some repairs to the flooring to prepare for new babies. I've also been cleaning out the chicken pen and hardening off our new chicks, who don't really look like babies anymore. Rod has been making some repairs and improvements to the goat fields to better accommodate our new alpacas.

Devon has been on spring break this week and starts her new quarter on Tuesday. This quarter she takes her Artisan Bread Baking class, I can't wait! She's also been applying for jobs since she has a much smaller course load this quarter than last, so she should have time for a part-time job.

Connor is starting Driver's Ed on Tuesday and still working at his Grandpa's office a couple of hours a week. Cameron is going to start at the office soon too.

Duncan and Morgan are busy with school. We are studying aquatic animals in science and just got tadpoles this week. The kids can't wait to see them grow into frogs. I just hope Brenna lets them live that long. She played with the sea monkeys the other day and we only have two left now.

Owen is adjusting pretty well to the re-increase in medication and the change in Keto ratio. He's changed his favorite food again, but I'm not sure if that's in response to the ratio changing  the recipes or just due to the fact that he seems to choose a new favorite food every few weeks anyway. We are already noticing his cognitive and behavioral issues go back to how they were before the medication reduction. Our ultimate goal on the ketogenic diet is to get seizure freedom on the diet alone and eventually even stop the diet and maintain that freedom from seizures, but right now I'm just trying to be happy with no seizures even if it requires the diet AND medications to stay that way.

Spring!

We've finally gotten a taste of the kind of spring that doesn't result in major flooding, so I took the kids to the park. The field was still a bit swampy, but the playground was dry!

I brought my nephews with me since they have Spring break this week. The big boys were hard to get pictures of though since they rarely stayed in one spot long enough.

Just a quick brag moment, I got complimented several times on how great my older boys were with the little ones by a couple of the other moms at the park. Sometimes it's so much fun having big kids and little kids at the same time!