Making My Pioneer Ancestors Proud

My mother is a fabulous seamstress. She was taught by her mother, who was also an excellent seamstress. She was taught by her mother, yet another impeccable seamstress, and on and on goes my heritage. As you might suspect, growing up I was taught how to sew. But I was never too interested in it and also very bad. I had many failures too - lots of unfinished projects, seam ripping, grunts and yells of frustration, and there was the time I sewed a needle completely through my pointer finger (not kidding, completely through, it was NOT a fun ER trip)

Not surprisingly, I began to shun sewing. My mother in her exasperation once said "Your pioneer ancestors are crying is despair watching you in heaven." Instead of shaming me, the comment only made me resent my ancestors and push me further away from sewing. Some teens rebel with drugs and alcohol. My rebellion was refusing to sew.

Nevertheless, I was taught and I can do small things like little mending projects. I am proud to say that recently I have done a few different projects that I am very pleased with. I patched up two pairs of pants (one of Ellie's and one of Annie's). I bought iron-on patches and thought it would be an easy fix. But then I realized I had to stitch the patches on to make them more permanent. So it got a little more time intensive than I planned, but they still turned out really well. What do you think?

Here are the pants together.
And a close up of Ellie's. Ellie is currently in LOVE with Belle as Matt discusses here. She was thrilled when she saw this.

And a close up of Annie's super cute cupcakes.

Then I went really crazy and made the girls some dress up tutus. They have been going to a little dance class with some girls their age and have had some major tutu envy. I didn't want to spend the money to buy them tutus. I had seen someone else make these little tutus with just some ribbon and cut tulle fabric. I decided I could do it too.

I took two pieces of ribbon and sewed them together and fed elastic through them to make the waistband. Then I cut come pieces of tulle and tied it to the waistband. Then, finally I added some ribbon strings to hang from it. They turned out so wonderful, I can't believe it. And it was really wasn't all that hard. I might even consider doing something else again. Who knows?

Here's the fruit of my labors. How cute are these?

The happy princesses Pioneer ancestors, what do you think of me now? Have you dried those tears yet?