The Domestication of Charlotte

I don't know what's wrong with me this pregnancy. I've had nesting so bad, I feel like Martha Stewart. For those of you who know me well, you know that I am not a domestic goddess. Sure, I clean (when necessary), I cook (and I actually sometimes enjoy that), but the finer art of domesticity, namely becoming an organized, highly functioning housewife, has never been my forte. I don't organize, anything really. Until recently. I just bought a bunch of storage bins for toys and things on the shelves so they're not just randomly thrown places. That was step one on my journey to domestication.

Step two has begun. I feel an need to create. What I consider a good time is reading a book, all day long. I don't craft, I don't scrapbook. So I decided to sew. Now, my mom tried to teach me to sew when I was a youth. In fact, I was in 4H. So picture me, a scatterbrained, left-handed girl, trying to sew. I cut out all of the patterns crookedly (I'm really bad at cutting), and then I sewed the dresses together crookedly. So usually, my mom would take over because she knew I just was not interested, and I also just do not have the skill for anything that requires an ounce of dexterity.

But, I thought to myself, "I made a quilt. I can make my kids' Halloween costumes." The quilt I made was so easy in comparison. I can't even begin to tell you. It was just sewing together strips, in straight lines. Even clumsy Charlotte could do that.

Things have been going wrong, very wrong, in my effort to make a Halloween costume. I should have taken it as a bad sign when I started to get panicky about picking fabric out in JoAnn's. However, I continued, and started making Dottie's princess dress with this, my old nemesis:
This is my mom's old sewing machine. It is very tricky to thread. It took me a full day to learn just how to thread the thing. I will list my other challenges in this venture, since you'd be bored in hearing the whole story:

• Cutting chiffonlike fabric is impossible. So crooked.
• Darts. What the heck are they? Those things that go up the "breasts" of a dress or shirt. I finally learned from a Youtube video. Another full day gone.
• Making a casing on a sleeve. Two full days gone.
• Sewing elastic in a sleeve. Another full day gone.
• Basting takes me forever.
• So much unpicking. Wow. At least a full day wasted.
  
• I'm really scared about putting in the zipper. I think I'll be watching Youtube again.
  
• My mom is ready to kill me because I call her every five minutes for help.

This is me, pretending I'm enjoying what I'm doing.

This is what I've got so far.

HOWEVER, I do think it's worth it. I may even make Elliot's tiger costume after this. Last night, I pinned on Dottie's dress to fit it for the zipper, and she couldn't stop talking about being a fairy princess. She didn't want to take it off. That alone made it all worth it. Plus I'm becoming a domestic goddess in the process.