I had the day off of work today! I prefer my 3-day weekends to be Fri-Sun instead of Sat-Mon... but I guess I'll take what I can get.

I didn't want to, but I mowed the lawn this morning. Yesterday would have been a much better day for it, but I was otherwise occupied... Kate & I had our shopping/lunch date with Ginny. I know a few of you saw my IG stories about that. She was a HOOT! I'll do a separate little post about it.

I also had a meeting with the house painter this morning.

Otherwise, I've been sewing! I cut all the pieces for the girls' dresses and have been sewing a little bit each day. Plus I hemmed a pair of jeans for Kate last night. I finished Malina's (except for a button) this afternoon. I thought some sewing-related macro shots would be appropriate.

I bought a new machine a few months ago, and I've finally gotten around to actually sewing something. It's a Baby Lock Jubilant. There's a bit of a learning curve, as it has quite a few more features than my old Husqvarna -- I have to look up how to do every single thing -- but I like it so far and it has some great features, such as self-threading and a drop-in bobbin under a see-through plate. I have wound a bobbin and threaded the machine once or twice now without having to look it up, so that's progress!

Nice, even stitches. The machine has a speed control, so if it's on SLOW, it'll only go so fast (or slow, heh) no matter how hard I step on the pedal. That'll be great if & when the kids want to learn to sew. I can also forego the pedal altogether and just use a start/stop button... but that seems so weird!

I used one of the overlock stitches to finish the edges of the flutter sleeves. It's so cool to be able to do that!

I sewed one of those sleeves three times in order to get the flutter placed in the correct position, right-side up. Ugh! The sewing directions were similar to the ones you see in sewing where you knit a thing and then they tell you to knit another one but reversing the shaping, or whatever. Yeah.

Ginny's should go a bit quicker, now that I've done it once and know what to look out for. The pattern is Violette Field Threads' Ruthie. I might actually do a strip of velcro where the button should go because this is a size 2 (the smallest available) and Malina is a bit shy of that and also not a super-pudge like her brother & sister were! Or maybe one buttonhole and two buttons.