Eve of Deployment

Tomorrow is the day we've been dreading, Joe leaves for his nine month deployment to Okinawa. At this point the two of us are ready for him to leave just so we can get the countdown started and the ordeal over with. We had a nice evening at home. Home made pizza from Joe's special recipe (that I never seem to be able to replicate), a dance party with the kids and a family snuggle.

I've decided to start this blog as a way to document the sewing projects I plan to complete over the next nine months to help pass the time and keep me from turning into a TV junkie in the evenings. My ambitious goal is to complete at least one project a week for the entire deployment. Besides that, I have not set up any rules or guidelines on what I'll make, so I suppose it could be as diverse as a dress for Audrey, a garment for me, dress up clothes for Grayden or something for the house. Also, plan to be subjected to random homemade gifts to celebrate birthdays. I figure while updating the blog, I can also reflect on what's happening in our family life to keep friends and family informed. I hope I can stick with it seeing as I'm horrible at remembering to take pictures and my writing skills are very rusty since I have not worked in about a year and a half.

Luckily I received a wonderful new sewing machine as a Christmas gift from Joe and my mom and I've completed a number of projects over the last few months as a warm up. I have even taken a sewing class to refresh my skills and am looking forward to starting the second part of it this week. I've also been stocking up on patterns whenever they are on sale at the local Hancock Fabrics and now have around 50. Whenever I see fabric on discount I've been buying it and have a nice stash, especially of cute cotton prints for little girl dresses. Once I get my skills up I want to hunt down a good fabric store to find quality fashion fabrics. There has got to be one in New Orleans, right? The other two things on my wish list are a serger and a dress fitting mannequin. Both would save me a lot of time in garment construction.

So after many years without sewing much at all (except for home decor projects closely supervised by my mom) I'm just going to jump right in and go for it. Plan on seeing both the success and failures posted here. I'm sure, at least at the beginning, there will be many more failures than successes. Here's to the very quick passage of the next nine months and to the creativity that can come from boredom and solitude.