Every year, we get together with all of Mike's extended family. On several occasions, Mike's aunt has made coordinating outfits for her granddaughters and I always thought this was a sweet idea. With this in mind, I dusted off the sewing machine and set to work making simple coordinating outfits for my two and their immediate cousin, Caroline. (That said, we consider all of Mike's cousins children to be cousins of our kids.) My time has been very crunched, as has been my energy, so I kept it simple. Pillowcase dresses (pattern from Sewing Green by Betz White) and matching shorts for Finnian (made up from memory of various tutorials put together, I suppose).
Aren't they adorable? The kids and the outfits? I only ask this vainly and slightly sarcastically, because as it turns out, it was all basically a bust. I finished them in time, with minimal bias tape cussing (dress armholes...I gave up trying to stitch in the ditch perfectly), but when I showed them to the kids, Finnian's face crumpled and he started crying "I don't like those shorts! I want a dress like Bella's!" Well....I am the kind of mamma who would have whipped one out for him, but I only had two pillowcases and had used the excess from Caroline's (size 2T versus Lala's size 7) to make the cuffs and pockets on his shorts.
Okay, I could convince him to wear them for a photo, no problem. Well, it turned out to be harder than I thought. Plus, the dress for Caroline wasn't as well received as I had hoped. Despite agreeing to put the kids in them Sunday morning for photos, in the end, I felt as though I had to beg for them all to get dressed and we waited around for awhile just to snap a handful of pictures. We couldn't get Caroline to look at the camera without tears unless she had her binky plug and car to keep her company.
Ah. well, such is life with little ones. Lesson learned for this mamma. I must say, though, that my girl was gleeful and appreciative the whole time, and in the end, the outfits made excellent swim/beach garb when we unexpectedly went to the beach while up at the lake. The joy of that hour made every stitch worthwhile. And hey, it got me sewing again.
