Not a Seamstress

I've had a sewing machine since college. I've sewn quilts, I've sewn curtains, pillows, beanbags and other things. But somehow I have never actually used a pattern. I have never taken a sewing class. I guess I just picked it up from my mom or sister? I don't remember mom sewing, so I'm going to guess it was my sister. I take that back, my mom made my curtains for my bedroom when I was little.

So Friday (Nov 7th) is the 50th day of school. And for the 50th day of school, the Kindergarten will be having 50s day. The teachers gave us a lot of warning, posting signs and costumes and sending home notes in the weekly newsletter for the past month. I had every intention of figuring this out several weeks ago. I looked at costumes on ebay and checked around at the Halloween stores. There were some ridiculously priced poodle skirts on ebay so I did a search on "how to make a poodle skirt." It's a circle, right? How hard can it be? Well I thought better of it and decided to wait on the idea and check ebay again. I had Katie look at a few and being the picky little princess that she is, she didn't like any of them.

Saturday we headed to Joann's to see if I could possibly pull this off. We found a pattern which helped me figure out how much fabric I'd need, but the pattern involved a zipper and a hook closure. I decided I'd rather just make it elastic waist - it's for one day, right? So we are looking at fabric - at first she picked out black fabric with a white poodle applique. But then she looked more closely at the picture on the pattern and there was a cheetah print skirt with a cat. And we have a winner! So we chose some cheetah fabric, but there was no cat applique. I picked up some elastic and we left. I decided I'd try to make it as easy as possible on myself so we headed to Hobby Lobby to see if they possibly had a cat. No luck. I picked up some sticky back felt and a zipper just in case.

This afternoon while everyone was sleeping I decided to tackle this project. I pulled out the pattern which made me so confused that I called a friend who I know sews well. She wasn't home. I decided to go ahead and cut the circle like the directions said online. I sort of followed the pattern, except that would have included sewing a seam (where the zipper is supposed to be), so I just folded the fabric and made one cut instead of two. So now I have a circle with a waist cut out of it. The pattern which said it was for sizes 3-10 or something like that only had lines for sizes 7-10, so it's a bit large for Katie. No problem - I'll cut it down. I tried making the waist like it said on the pattern, but once again I wasn't really understanding the pattern so it's pretty much useless. Katie thought it was a cat tail, so I guess it will go into the dress up trunk. The one good thing about the pattern is that it included the outline for the cat, so I was able to trace that and cut it out. I gave up on the rest of it and made dinner instead.

So after all went to bed I decided to try to put the elastic into the waist circle that is cut out already. I pinned it all and even sewed the two ends of the elastic together so that they would stay the right size. Luckily before I started actually sewing the waistband I realized that I don't have any elastic thread. You need that to make an elastic waistband right? I guess Kyle and I will be venturing out tomorrow to find that. I'm really starting to wish I had forked over the $40 for one of the skirts on ebay...