Little girl room

My girl's room is the smallest one in the house (maybe 10' by 9') but also my favorite with beautiful light and nice windows. I like the challenge of making it great for her to play in and good for us all to look at.

When we switched the girl to this room the key purchase was her bed -- a captain's bed with 4 drawers and 2 shelves. All her clothes are in the drawers (with space to spare) and books and toys are on the shelves (just visible at the head of the bed). We were trying to maxmize floor space and it's worked out great.

The girl has a decent closet with a hanging rod for her dresses and shelves above for toys but we still needed visible storage. We revamped the hanging bookcase at the foot of the bed by adding a tackable surface and the pegs. And built a ton of shelves with something like 14 pegs total to hang bags, medals, toys and even a crib for her baby doll (OK, it's a plastic basket I bought at the hardware store -- you can see it hanging above the tent at the foot of her bed -- but it works great).

Speaking of the tent, this is where we get into enhancing play space. The door to the attic is at the foot of the bed so you can't put anything permanent there. I took fabric & 3 tension rods and made the play tent, which just today had 2 kids and 2 adults crammed in there to eat brownies. When we need to get to the attic we can just pull the rods out.

For pretty things, I cross-stitched a monogram on the wool blanket and did chicken-scratch embroidery on the curtains. The chicken scratch took *forever* but it is really pretty. . .

Corduroy

Over the past 3 weeks I've discovered corduroy! OK, *I* didn't discover it, obviously, but for the first time in the ~30 years I've been sewing I made something out of it! Actually, three things:

1. Oliver + S sandbox pants for the boy. OK, these weren't the most fun sewing I ever did but the pattern was well-written and the pants turned out nicely.


Last year the boy wore Comfort Cords from Hanna Andersson. These are great but they're expensive ($34 plus shipping) and the corduroy just can't match the quality of the gorgeous Spechler-Vogel featherwale from Sweet Treasures (that might sound like a sex toy site but it's actually an heirloom sewing shop). It's so soft and smooth. . . .

But we'll see how it holds up. I'm not optimistic; corduroy shows wear terribly and I patched the knees in all the boy's corduroy pants last year at least twice. But this year at least the patches can be the same fabric as the rest of the pants.


2. Navy Mary Jane jumper from Collars Etc. This is a good, plain jumper for everyday. The pattern only has two pieces (one front, one back); you cut them in the outside fabric (here the same beautiful Spechler Vogel corduroy) and in a lining. Sewing was easy and would have been fast except for the rickrack trim around the neck, armholes and hem. I sewed the rickrack onto the corduroy super slowly and carefully and then sewed on the same lines again to attach the corduroy and lining to each other.

Instead of one large button on each shoulder I used two small ones that I pulled off of a 10-year old J Crew sweater that was in my donation pile.

3. Bright pink Kitty jumper from Children's Corner patterns.


When I pulled out the fabric from the Sweet Treasures envelope I thought, "Oops. Too bright. This is what I get for ordering off the internet." But, happily, once sewn up it looks great to me. The jumper is certainly bright but not overwhelming as it was when seen in one big piece.

I think this jumper is gorgeous. The girl wishes it had pockets.

Favorite toys -- wooden trains

Hands-down, wooden trains were the toy that got the most play at our house for about 5 years, starting when my boy was 1.5. For years they got so much use that we kept them in the living room; Daddy or I built a layout nearly every day.

We eschewed a train table; our layouts were just too big. Sometimes they wouldn't even fit in the living room and would snake around the dining room table too.

These days the trains do get less use; they're in the upstairs playroom now. But they still come out every month -- and now the kids build the layouts themselves.

We started out with Brio trains but around 3 years old my boy started asking for Thomas engines. I was resistant -- why add to commercialism? -- but came around. Having engines with names added another dimension to their play -- at the height of their train interest the kids acted out story lines from the original books and made up their own stories about interactions between the various engines.

Best blue dress

I've been doing a bit more sewing lately, especially now that my girl likes to wear dresses. This is her best summer dress, made from Vogue 7504. I got the plaid fabric from Elegant Stitches and it's beautiful -- clear, crisp, 100% cotton but not very wrinkly. The dark purple piping is actually the reverse side of the leftovers from a dress I made for myself more than 10 years ago.

This dress took forever to make because I was matching the plaid -- along the tuck lines, between the bodice pieces, etc. Other than that it was straightforward.

I love this dress because it's not pink and nothing about it says 2008 to me. The girl loves it because it's twirly.