Mother’s Day

Fortune has smiled on me in my life and blessed me with two wonderful women that I get to call Mother. One by birth, the other by marriage. Each of them so similar, yet so different. My heart carries so much love and admiration for them and I’m very thankful for my mothers. I recognize that this is not the case for everyone, and I feel grateful for what I have.

Mother’s day is here and I feel like I always struggle with this day. Not because I don’t want to recognize and celebrate my mothers and all that they have done and continue to do for me and my family, but because I feel like anything I do to try and express my gratitude for them is just subpar. Father’s day is exactly the same for me. What do you do or get for the people who provided you nearly everything while growing up? It’s kind of impossible to dream up any sort of gift or service that could convey how you feel about them. Sure, there is the day to day things, a call, a text, or if you are close, a visit. There are things like that. But i always feel like they aren’t enough for a day about celebrating Mothers.

This year, I’ve grown in my sewing confidence and I decided to sew something for each of my mothers as a way to express my love and appreciation for them. While not a perfect gift, I hope my handmade pieces can properly convey my appreciation for them. So I made my mother a maxi dress, and my mother-in-law a nice blouse for Mothers Day.

The Details

My Mother-in-law has a very similar skin tone to mine, very fair with red hair, so it was easy to pick out her fabric color. I went with a beautiful purple color in bamboo knit fabric. My Mother is quite the opposite with a more olive skin tone and dark hair. I couldn’t decide on a good fabric for her, so I finally sent her a couple options of prints she might like, and she picked one. (She had no idea what I was making.) I didn’t want her dress to just be a print, so I chose a coordinating solid to go with it. Both the print and solid for this dress were a cotton spandex knit fabric.

I already had patterns in mind for both of their items, so once the fabric came in, I was good to go! For my mother-in-law, I chose the Boho Babydoll from Patterns For Pirates. It’s their most recent pattern and it’s so cute and trendy.

For my mother, I chose the Boundless dress, also by Patterns For Pirates. They recently updated it and gave it a couple more options.

I have made the Boho Babydoll several times already, so my Mother-in-law’s top was a quick sew and turned out beautifully!

The boundless dress, I must admit, I have much less experience with. The Boundless dress has a lining in the bodice, which was a first for me with a knit project. I’ve only dealt with that on woven projects before.

I’ve been playing with understitching lately.  Understitching is sewing the seam allowance to the lining to keep it from showing while being worn. This pattern didn’t mention understitching in the directions, but I thought it would add a nice touch…. So, I understitched it…. And guys…. I forgot to change my tension from my twin needle which has a much tighter tension! I stitched that whole sucker up before I realized that I hadn’t change the tension. The entire neckline was stretch out and my stitches were beyond micro in size!

Well, I couldn’t leave it that way so out came the seam ripper… for almost 2 hours…. Really, it shouldn’t take that long to rip out a neckline seam, but these stitches were so small I could hardly see them!

Once the stitches were out, I washed and ironed it again, and luckily I was saved by the grace of the fabric shrinking machine.. Or.. um, washing machine. The neckline returned to normal! The rest of the steps were simple and I decided to skip the understitching second go around. You know, since it was only supposed to be “a nice touch” and all…

I think both of that garments came out looking pretty good! Despite my understitching mishap, I know that my mother, and mother-in-law will both know that I took the time to hand craft something special just for them. And hopefully, it adds some happiness to their Mother’s Day.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for reading. Happy Mothers day!