Sewing and Stitching Update, July

My Celtic Santa counted cross stitch has all the cross stitching completed.  Now I am working on the backstitching and plan to do the beading and get it finished in the coming month.  

In June's update, I showed 10 airplanes that I had sewn for the Airplane Quilt.  How many airplane blocks have I made since then?

Eleven!  That brings the total to 21, which is half the number I need to make.  It makes me feel good that I was able to sew that many.  

21 Airplanes

There was a day in late June that I had wanted to spend some time sewing, but ended up spending about 6 hours instructing DD2 in how to do 'clothing' construction.  She had purchased fabric to make Brad an apron for his birthday, and through circumstances ended up waiting until pretty much the last minute to come over and sew it.  As she hadn't sewn anything before other than the log cabin throw quilt she made for the wedding present of friends a few years ago we had to start with washing, drying and ironing the fabric as all fabric for clothing should be preshrunk.  

Then came learning how to read pattern instructions, identify and cut out the correct pattern pieces for the item being made, layout the fabric with the correct side up, pinning down the pattern with the correct side up, cutting around the pattern pieces, transferring marking lines from the pattern to the fabric before removing the pattern pieces. . .  And then the actual sewing. 

Since DD2 had also brought over about 5 loads of laundry to do while here (instead of paying to use the machines at her apartment complex), she spent about 15 minutes of every hour changing the load in the washer, hanging stuff out on the line or putting it in the dryer (depending on how long it would take to line dry).  So the 'sewing class' took way more time than we'd anticipated.

But, she finished her first ever apron in time to gift it to Brad on his birthday, and while I couldn't sew and quilt blocks that day I did manage to sew a total of eleven new airplanes in the last month.  

Faline sent me home from her house a couple of weeks ago with a tulle tu-tu style skirt that she'd ripped the top layer almost completely off of.  Her request?  "Please sew this for me; I need to be Minnie Mouse for Halloween."  The layer in need of reattaching is red with big white polka dots, so it would be rather difficult to be Minnie Mouse without it.  That is on my sewing list for the coming month, as well as seeing how many more airplanes I can get sewn.