The beginning

I got my start as a sewer a little over a year ago.

I was using cloth diapers on my daughter, Littles (age 2 at the time), and had really started to love wool longies. Longies are pants that double as cloth diaper covers. They're trimmer than most cloth diaper options, they're more absorbent, and they're easy to get on a toddler who doesn't like to sit still for diaper changes! There's only one problem: They can be expensive! One of my main reasons for using cloth diapers is to save money, so spending $20 or more on a pair of longies just wasn't going to happen.

But then I heard about people sewing longies out of old wool sweaters, purchased for just a few dollars at a thrift store. I even found a free longies pattern online. Now we're talking. There was only one problem: I didn't know how to sew. And I'm not a crafty person. At. All. It seemed easy enough, but was I getting in over my head?

Undaunted, I asked around to see if any of my friends had a sewing machine, in hopes that I could give sewing a try without investing any money. Sure enough, one of my friends was happy to let me borrow hers. One night, I put my daughter to bed and then sat down with the borrowed sewing machine (and its manual), a free pattern for wool soakers (diaper covers), and an old wool sweater of mine that had a hole in it. A few hours later, I had this:

Not the prettiest thing, but it worked beautifully as a cover for Littles' overnight diapers until she outgrew it about six months later!

Encouraged, I hit up my favorite local thrift store on their half price day, walked away with an armload of sweaters for less than $10... and a few nights later, I had a couple of pairs of longies for Littles.

Who then promptly potty trained. Oh well.

But I did have another baby on the way, so I sewed up some longies for him. And when I got a good deal on Dora the Explorer fleece, I made some pajamas for Dora-obsessed Littles as a Christmas present:

The friend who originally lent me the sewing machine decided to get a new one, so she was happy to sell her old one to me for cheap. I was on my way.

After Noob's arrival in late January, I was too busy to sew for quite a while. But I've slowly gotten back into it, and I've found more and more fun projects to work on. I love it!

I decided to start a blog to share what I'm doing, and hopefully encourage other rookie sewers to jump on in. The water is fine!