Little Women Sew Need to Sew Their Own Clothes

April's Lesson:  The Skill of Sewing and Dressing Modestly

How wonderful it is to be able to see a need and fulfill it.  St. Anne and Mary knew that they would need clothes for the new baby, Jesus.  How lovingly they must have worked to prepare with detail and diligence the garments that would become Our Lord's first clothes!  How exciting it is for our young daughter's to have a skill that will not only make it possible for them to do homemade gifts, but it will be practical when the time comes that they need something they can't seem to find in a store.  (These days, try finding a teenager an Easter dress that isn't exposing her chest or her undergarments when she leans over--sick, I know)

In addition to the practicality of this skill, the sheer enjoyment that they all received from picking out fabric and ribbon, as well as working in a group, and having an adorable finished product was so impressive that they all decided to meet in a few months, with the supplies needed to work on their Christmas gifts!

First, in the lesson was measuring and marking the dimensions of the pattern.

Cutting the pieces.

Measuring the ribbon.

Cutting....

Pinning the pieces....

right sides together with the ribbon pinned in place as well.....

And with conventional wisdom, the girls did some practice straight stitching.

Finally, it was time to sew the apron.

Press those seams!

Break a needle!  Wait a minute, that was not supposed to happen.

Fix the needle; thank you Ms. Susie.

Add a pretty custom stitch on the top with the fancy electronic machine that one particular lucky girl so generously shared. :)  Thanks, Rachel.

Of course, we had to make sure it fit.

Then model it.

And cook in it.  Just kidding, I didn't make them cook anything--this time.

Oh, that's right, I forgot to mention be goofy in it.

Awesome stuff, right?

Beautiful selection and craftsmanship!

After a relaxing lunch and a candid discussion on what is modest and appropriate attire for different situations we headed to the pool.

The weather has been so inviting lately and I wasn't sure if we could finish all of our sewing in just the morning hours, so I didn't plan a service part of the day as in all meetings.

The girls seemed to be eager to relax and swim....

That was until they got in the FREEZING water.  :)  

One last photo that for some reason is very heartwarming to me.  The "Bring Your Stuff to Make for Christmas Party" will be a wonderful time for this bunch of chatty girls. :)

Little Women get hospitable and creative

During the month of March, yes, WAY back then, Little Women were able to come together once again and learn a new skill as well as enjoy some awesome Catholic fellowship.  

Our focus for the meeting was The Skill of Bringing Hospitality to Others.  I love that it was during the month of March, which is when the Catholic church celebrates The Feast of the Visitation (March 25)--on a side note, this feast remembers when the Angel Gabriel visits Mary and asks her to be the mother of God.  She says, "Yes," and we remember this moment on March 25, exactly nine months before Christmas.

So, our Holy Inspiration was the Visitation from Luke's gospel.  I had planned that the girls would learn how to decorate cookies, to be given away, and then we were going to enjoy a guest speaker, and visit a widow from church in the afternoon.  It was a great plan!

Here, Ms. Susie is showing the girls the proper way to hold their bag of icing.

 Bubbles has the hang grip of it.

 The idea was to teach them the basket weave pattern for making basket cookies.

 Bubbles is really good at this part, which can be difficult because of the spacing.

 After some practice, it was time for the actual cookie.

Not bad, right?

Here are the other girls and their soon to be masterpieces.

A few more techniques to try....

What to fill the baskets with????

Flowers are good.

The mess was incredible.  Does this still look like fun?

Finished products put us in the mood for Easter.

Proud, proud, proud, with good reason.

Here is our guest speaker, Sarah.  She was explaining her experience last summer with a program called People to People. She traveled abroad to Europe as an ambassador and was able to not only have the wonderful experience of travel and self knowledge, but she had opportunities to stay with families and meet other students and basically be hospitable and receive hospitality.  She loved it and would like to do it again some day.  

Here she is showing the girls some of her photos, which she compiled into a power point.

For the final part of the day, we hopped in the car and traveled down the road a bit to visit a lady from church, a precious lady I should say.  She welcomed us with open arms and the girls fell instantly in love with her as she had them go around and tell a little about themselves. It was a little over an hour that in the girls' words, "...went way too fast."  It was all agreed that we would have to do it again soon.

We brought our homemade sugar cookies, all freshly decorated, to Ms. Sloan, but to our surprise she had treats for us.  Delicious!  The popcorn was kettle corn.

Here are just some shots of the fun we had with the icing!

All in all it was a fabulous day!  April's meeting is about modesty in dress and we get to attempt sewing.  What kind of crazy things do I get us into?!

Little Women learn proper correspondence.

This month's lesson on hospitality was on the skill of correspondence. Whether we are writing to keep in touch, inform, say thank you, express sympathy, extend an invitation, or acknowledge a special occasion there is a proper way to do it.

After our opening prayer and a review of last month's skill, we looked at some letters I had that were almost 2,000 years old! What luck, right? Well, you can do it too. We each got a Bible and turned to the Letter to the Romans written by Paul.
In fact, we flipped through several of the Epistles in the New Testament taking special note of the Greeting Paul used. (Hebrews is listed as a letter in the New Testament, but the author is not specified as Paul. Before each book of the Bible there is a historical account of that book which helps you to begin to understand the context under which it was written and for whom). So now, in Mass, each time the girls hear, "A reading from the letter of Paul to the ....", their ears should perk up!
We moved on to discuss the logistics of a good letter. Can you spot any of them?

1. ) Date at top- flush with the right margin

2.) A proper greeting

3.) An indention at the beginning of each paragraph

4.) All other lines in the paragraph flush to the left margin

5.) Even though this is a thank you note, it is all too often that we rush to write a quick note and we never tell the receiver anything about our lives. We just greeted them and ended. So the following picture has a list of things that could be included in a letter to make it more personal.

6.) A proper closure

7.) A signature, which I realize was cut off in this picture. (Sigh)

The girls each brought the name and address of someone they wanted to write a letter to for the purpose of "keeping in touch". Here they work diligently to be thoughtful, write neatly, and follow their new guidelines.
After snack, my wonderful neighbor stopped by to teach the girls calligraphy! She is a painter by trade, but has dabbled in calligraphy for many years and was even paid for a logo she created with her skill. She showed the girls many different styles of calligraphy.
Even some Chinese painted calligraphy that was done for her.
Here she is teaching them the skill of using different pressure amounts to create thick and thin lines, using different tools (this is just a carpenters pencil), and holding the pen in different positions to get different effects.
The girls were excited to see and hold the reed pen and the inks.
These penholders were the favorite, of course.
OOOOHHHH, AAAAAHHHHH!

Different nibs (tips) for different styles of calligraphy.
Practicing with a felt tip pen.
Now, using the REAL stuff!
I think I remember that all the girls preferred the felt tip pens for ease of writing and quickness (meaning no stopping and dipping).
This is the only group picture I got of them enjoying themselves while making thank you cards for my neighbor.
Here was the thank you treat we delivered later on. What a blessing to have such wonderful people in our lives. The girls learned so much.
After that lesson, we took a lunch break and then intended to watch the movie, Letters to God, but Netflix removed it from the instant watch category the night before! Can you believe it? Instead we watch a movie entitled, The Secret of Jonathan Sweeney. The girls really enjoyed it.

As for next month, we will be learning about taking our hospitality to others and our holy inspiration will be the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth! Exciting stuff!