"You can do that, right Mom?"

Um...  Sure.  Sure I can. 

You certainly seem to think so, anyway.  So let's see if you're right.

We have a geriatric dove named Gracie who dutifully lays eggs for us every two weeks or so.  The fairies are fascinated with her as she has been a fixture for them their whole lives.  They are rarely allowed to handle her and love her from afar.  Secunda took my design notebook this morning and drew up a little sketch of her Gracie.  And then the question:  "You can do that, right Mom?"

I looked up to Big Daddy grinning at me.  "Right, Mom?" he asked. 

Umm... Sure.  Sure I can.  Because I love you so much, I will risk failure.  And disappointing you.  So here goes.

Here's the preliminary sketch Secunda approved (and Tertia was nice enough to put her own name on it).  I wanted to just use some muslin and Secunda chose the buttons. 

Buttons for beak, eyes, and wings. Chosen by the artist.  There's even a Gracie feather in the shot!

I wanted the wings to button on and off, just to make it more interesting.  I free-handed the whole thing and got it completed in about 45 minutes. 

Nothing fancy, but made with so much love. 

How could I say no to those eyes? 

And this Gracie can PLAY!!  Yaaaays!!

Superhero Dresses, Super Easy, Super Awesome

Secunda and Tertia, the twins, lovelovelove their superheros.  Secunda's heart will always belong first to her daddy and second to Spiderman.  Tertia is Batman's moll.  Prima is way into princesses now so she's exercising her Flower Power at every opportunity.

My super-of-choice is Wonder Woman, natch.  I had the underooz, watched the divine Lynda Carter religulous-ly, and truly believed I'd grow into a 6-ft Amazon that.  Kicked.  Ass.  As that did not happen, I compromised with a boss tattoo.  And lots of daughters...  But I digress.

I lovelovelove sewing some fabric to a shirt and calling it good.  ALL of us were happy with this project!

Prima's dress is a yard of fabric sewn to her tank top.  It took maybe 25 minutes, start to finish.  I just gathered one side and zigzagged it to the knit tank.

I wish I'd cleaned the sticky off my camera.

The superhero dresses were slightly more involved.  I started from the bottom and worked my way up.  Gathered the sparkle ruffle and attached; gathered the superhero panels and zigzagged those to the elastic band.  Last, I attached the tank tops.  The fabric is from Joanns, elastic too.  The tanks are from The Dollar Store, and I think we cleaned them out. 

And here's the obligatory "She's holding me too TIGHT, Mom!" shot that I usually get first.

  The whole point of this is to show how easy it is to sew in straight lines for about an hour and make some sweet babies so very happy.  They wear these straight from the dryer and don't take them off until they have to go directly into the washer.  They get positive attention, are idealizing human qualities through pretend play, and sometimes only answer to their superhero names.

I'll take it over the Princess Pandering any day.

Seen here!