Sewing!

Saturday, I achieved the status of *hero mom*. Though I wasn't officially titled in this way, I know it's how my kids feel about me at this point. How do I know? - just the way they look at me and my handiwork. To be precise my handiwork is machine sewn 'blankets.' That's right, I've begun sewing. My mother-in-law just purchased all of her daughter-in-laws beautiful new sewing machines. These puppies are the bomb, let me tell you! They each do 70 different stitches (think flowers and snowflakes etc.) with the flip of a button.

I've never been a sewer in my life; I've tried it a couple times in the past and failed miserably, but this experience was far too positive for me to feign any sort of sewing disability. Not only was my mother-in-law encouraging me and guiding me along the way with my very own machine and some different scraps of cloth she'd brought for me to practice on, but my kids were too! Little Jimmy couldn't have been more eager for me to sew him a 12" X 5" *blanket* if he tried! He picked out a scrap of fabric his Mima had brought, then selected various little animals or people from other scraps to be cut out and sewn onto his blanket. For each little person/animal that was sewn onto his blanket, he got to pick the stitch. And for all of his instruction and decision making, he was a very encouraging boss: "You're doing a great job, Mommy!" or "I'm so proud of you!" or "This is the best! I love it!"; all this coupled with screams of joy and jumping around. For Kyla, I took a little square (maybe 5" X 5") of fleece material and sewed this nice satin trim around half of it and some girly pink lace around the other half of it. To say that she felt honored to receive this hot-pad sized blanket from me would be a massive understatement. Yesterday evening as she was getting sleepy, she was found laying on the floor, her head solely resting on the small swatch of material that was her new blanket.

All this adoration for my sewing has left me with the desire to learn more. My next projects to experiment with are (and not in any particular order): baby leggings, a taggie book/blanket, a quilted blanket (2'X2'), and a pillow. I was so excited about it all that, I nearly drug my extremely sick daughter to Wal-Mart today just to get some fleece (fortunately, I quickly regained my composure before actually acting on this absurd idea). I feel like a whole new world has opened up to me - you know, the fabric world, encompassing various sections of stores and even whole stores themselves! Now I can find a use for these sections/stores too! Hooray for my exciting new hobby!