My First Sewing Project, Ever.

Most of the women in my family sew and I grew up watching them sew project after project. It is neat to think that many of the bridesmaids dresses from my mom's generation were individually sewn by each of the bridesmaids. I have often wondered if that was just a common thing to sew back in the day because more women were sewers or if that is something that is unique to my family. If anyone has any insight into that, I would love to hear it.

My mom, grandma and aunts sewed clothes for themselves, clothes for me, curtains for my room, doll clothes for my Cabbage Patch Kids, etc. I especially like to reminisce about the navy, pink and white eyelet lace balloon shades my mom and aunt made for me when we moved to a new town in Wyoming when I was 15. It was incredibly special to have my new room so beautifully decorated.

I should also mention that my Memaw sews A LOT. I think nearly everything in her closet is sewn by her. She has a fabulous pants pattern that she can whip up in no time flat. She also makes a lot of her own curtains and has made curtains for my mom recently --- as my mom has been working a zillion hours & has grandkids to sew for now! Also, my Memaw can fix ANYTHING. It's great to know a person like that. (Once I got a silk tie in the mail from Thailand and I cut through it with scissors when I openened the envelope. She even fixed that.)

Many times as a teenager my mom came through for me when I thought I had "nothing to wear". I would help her cut the material out and she would sew (sometimes late into the night) so that I could have something cute for the next day. For Christmas, when I got my first Cabbage Patch doll it meant the world to me that my aunt sewed me a whole collection of doll clothes that included shirts with hearts on them, pants and cute drop-waist dresses. How thoughtful was that? I am sure there are many times that they sewed for me that I can't even remember.

My first sewing project was when I was in 3rd grade. It was a self-drafted pattern for a frog that I made out of some scrap material that my mom had. the top of the frog is dark purple kind of suede-like material and the bottom is off-white muslin. It is completely hand sewn, filled with rice and I used psychedelic red and blue buttons for the eyes. I remember that it turned out to be much smaller than I had anticipated!


I remember bathing my frog growing up, can you believe it? Somehow this hand-sewn frog filled with rice has made it through multiple situations where it was lathered with hand soup and washed in the sink. At least we know it's clean, I guess. I cringe to think of what the rice inside of it looks like at this point. I still love that frog, though.

I still have my frog, Francis around. As you can see from the pix, I have pictures of Francis hanging out on my tea cup when I'm having my morning cup and also pictures of him looking at my computer. Probably watching You've Got Mail or something playing on the macbook.



I also made a frog for my BFF growing up, Katie Alexander. She was also known as "Salamander" as the name Alexander sounds a bit like Salamander to little ones. Her homemade (couture even?) frog story is one of love, lost love and the ultimate reunion. :) Her frog was a little larger than mine, as I had learned some lessons from the construction of my first frog. It had cupcakes on it as I made it from a summer jumpsuit of mine that no longer fit. I gave it to her at church and the next day she took it to school with her and it was stolen! It was a sad, sad day. Then, at the end of the school year, someone returned it to her by leaving it on her desk. I was glad that she got it back.

I'd still make her 100 frogs today. Hopefully no one at work would steal them, though! Oh, the humanity!

Anyway, I'd love to hear from anyone who has stories of their family members sewing or stories of their first sewing projects!