Fourth of July Fun!

It was such a busy and wonderful weekend! On Friday night, we attended a concert of the US Fleet Band in the city park with Grandma Butler and many of our friends. We visited during the concert and ate alot of popcorn. The fireworks were beautiful and the music was very patriotic!

Over breakfast on Saturday, in place of morning bible study, we discussed what Independence Day is really about. It was a lively conversation about the brave folks who put their lives on the line when they signed the Declaration. Bob and I even serenaded our family with our version of the "Star Spangled Banner".

In the afternoon we celebrated with our church family at a pool party picnic in our neighborhood. It was a gorgeous day and loads of fun! There were over fifty children swimming, playing and eating. Our hosts graciously reminded us of the meaning of the Fourth and lead us is a prayer of praise and gratitude for our many freedoms, physical and spiritual.

When everything was cleaned up, our family, and the host family of the party, headed to Busch Gardens for rides, more fireworks and dinner! More fun! We are blessed!



Below is our family with Grandma Butler before the concert. Kendal, Kelsey and I designed matching clothes for the girls in our family. Kendal made herself a shirt and sash, and Kelsey made a coordinating sash for herself, while I sewed t-shirt dresses for the three little girls. We were able to get their t-shirts on sale at Kohl's. Noah's outfit was free with a coupon! (girls, including me, think this is as fun as attending the event) They all wore their new outfits all weekend. I washed them at night, of course.

Grandma Butler and Mary at the concert
Kendal and Kelsey with three of their girlfriends. They played Uno on the blanket during the concert.
We were so glad to see Ms. Ennis at the concert too! She's hugging Kendal, Joy and Noah here.
Watching fireworks.

Noah at the pool party on Saturday. Our friend, Jennifer, took this great shot!
And this one of the young ladies in the pool. Kendal and Kelsey are on the far end.
These are the Butler and Ward children (minus 2) at the entrance of Busch Gardens. Both our families have summer passes, so we go together often.

More sewing

We found fabric on clearance and Kendal made matching dresses for Joy and Mary. She also complete my new shirt. And I made a dress for Mary with a Lands' End clearance peasant shirt, yard sale fabric and clearance rack trim. Anna also has a new shirt made from yard sale fabric. We love sewing with bargain materials!!!

This week Kendal sewed a swimsuit cover up with some cotton gauze that I found on clearance. There's plenty left so we'll hopefully all get something new from it!

Feminine Shirts

Kendal has designed a pattern for the trendy, peasant shirts that have flooded the stores this spring. In twenty-four hours she made three beautiful shirts and coached me on enlarging her pattern so that I could have one for myself. We used fabric that had been saved from a skirt, left-over from a dress, and some purchased for one and two dollars. At this rate we'll all be dressed in beautiful shirts that are custom-made by Kendal.

Last week I bought two shirts of this style at the thrift store and was very disappointed when I tried them on at home, because neither one fit me. No worries now. Kendal's shirts are modest and made to fit!

Making Aprons

We were recently considering how we could encourage our pastor's wife and his daughters (currently they have six) to continue to be ladies given to hospitality. We hoped to bless them for being so giving to our church family and for being a great family of hospitality. They had invited our family over for dinner this past Friday and also had recently hosted Colin and Nancy Campbell in their home during our church's conference with them. We decided that aprons would be an appropriate choice for their gift.

We were inspired by the ladies at Marie Madeline Studio(http://www.mariemadelinestudio.com/ ) who make aprons and other feminine treats. We made five aprons that range in size. We presented their aprons to them on Friday night after dinner.

We designed the pattern and used the little ladies in our family to help design the right sizes. Each apron cost less than $3. We used on sale "fat quarters" to make the top and bottom, ribbon for the ties and remants for the neck, ruffles and trim. The aprons do not cover as much as a grown lady might want, especially if she likes to wipe her hands on the sides of her apron skirts, because these skirts are not very wide. The was one way that we cut corners on cost and were able to utilize the remnant pieces that were on sale.

We made certain there would be no raw edges, so we used french seams, lining, bias tape and ribbon to cover all the edges. This took extra time, but it will increase the longevity of the life of the aprons.

Kendal, Kelsey and I were able to do the majority of the work in about seven hours. We made a great team! I should mention that it was Martin Luther King Jr. day and Bob had the rest of the family at Grandma Butler's while we worked! That helped tremendously!

Here are the Shedd girls with their aprons on. Baby Juliana is not included. :)
The Butler girls and all the Shedd girls together.

In this photo, Joy is modeling the apron I made for our six year old friend's birthday. I bought material for this special apron. So there was plenty of fabric to line the top and bottom. The skirt is gathered. All the seams are inside. It helps to make it feel and look professionally made. It has been a great learning experience for us to design and sew so many aprons. Kendal has made two other lovely aprons, for a friend, and they are even different from these.

This is Ashleigh in her new apron. She really loved it!

Is it really a good deal?

Have you ever thought you were getting a really good deal on something only to discover at a later date that it wasn't as thrifty as you'd hoped? For example:


We often shop at thrift stores and do not try clothes on before we buy them. At a thrift store there are no returns. We usually come home and say things like, "We bought five skirts and five shirts for the price of one new outfit!" Then after we wash and try the items on, we find out there were tears from the tag/staples put in at the store, or that the some clothes are too tight to be worn modestly. Suddenly our average price per item is rising. These mistakes teach us to shop more wisely next time. And ultimately it is still a better deal than shopping at a real store, but disappointing just the same.


Another common experience is in sewing. We'll find a pattern that we already own and even material that was left-over and start to create an outfit, usually for a little member of our family. Four days later the project is just not what we'd dreamt it would become. Too many adjustment have to be made to compensate for too little fabric. Even if we keep the finished product long enough to take a picture, it just isn't useful after that. On the other hand, sometimes the addition of a little skirt to an unused onesie becomes a beautiful dress.


Recently, we found instructions for making a tiered skirt. You know, the kind that are different, yet coordinating fabrics on four levels. The fabrics used on the example made it look like it would be pretty even without yards and yards of gathered fabric. They used striped fabrics on two layers. That added a gathered effect. It sounded like an inexpensive way to make a nice full skirt. Next, we went to the clearance table of our neigborhood fabric store and started "matching" materials for the levels of four skirts. (BTW, that took me hours because I, Marcella, am color challenged for sure) We're posting some photos today of the finished products.

We concluded that all three of us (Kendal, Kelsey and Marcella) prefer the very full, gathered tiered skirts. So we decided that in the future we'll adjust the pattern from online to suit our tastes. We were able to change around some of the fabric and make Kendal's skirt fuller.

For thirty dollars I had purchased enough fabric to make two nightgowns for little girls, and material for three tiered skirts. That was a great deal! Most of the fabric was $2-3 a yard. My skirt materials were mostly fall colors. So I went back for some last minute summer fabrics. It was so bright and unusual for me that I was concerned I'd never wear it. Thankfully a friend invited us to a Hawaiian theme birthday party that week and I developed a love for the comfort of my new, crazy skirt.

The toughest part is to make a cool, cotton skirt that doesn't require a slip. If you have to wear a nylon slip it just defeats the whole purpose of wearing cool cotton! So I'm going to make a slip of muslin this week!

In the end, I think we'll have two nightgowns and four skirts for about thirty-five dollars! That's not bad at all.


This is Kendal's skirt. Hers has four widths of fabric on the bottom, three on the third tier, two on the second and one on the top.
This is my "summer" skirt. According to the pattern, you can also pull it up to chest level and make it a dress. We didn't include any photos of that! :)
This is Kelsey's skirt. Each of us sewed our own. These were the first projects that the girls had made on their new sewing machine!

Family Creations

This is a Lego robot that Daniel created.
Of course, God created this precious six week old baby! We are amazed every morning at how much bigger and fatter he is!
Isaac and Daniel created this Lincoln Log fort.
Joy created this Lego schoolhouse. She is quite the engineer and works alone. :) Kelsey smocked this. One day it will be a dress.

Kendal and her friend, Elizabeth Rush, exchanged beads in the mail and this is the bracelet Kendal made with hers. She wanted Elizabeth to be able to see it. The internet and digital cameras make it so easy to stay in touch. We are blessed to have both!
This is a dress that Kendal made by herself, without a pattern, with material that the Bacon family was discarding. She has worn it to church with a spring sweater over top. She's planning to make a few more changes, like adding a zipper. This is the back view (above).
This is a view of the top front (above). There are beads along the top edge.
This is a full view of the front.

It's too hot outside for us. It's been 100 degrees here for the last five days! The children have been swimming twice. But now that Daddy is back to work we'll have to stay home. It's too hot outside for Noah to wait for us by the pool. So, everyone is being productive inside. Kelsey made more spit cloths today for Noah. My denim skirt is still in progress. We're hoping Kendal will finish smocking Cousin Lisa's baby girl's dress soon.