i am perhaps seasonally confused

Oh man, file this one under "I'm a bad mom." At the beginning of summer I cut out this dress for Daughter, and proceeded to ignore it for pretty much the entire season. Niiiiiiice. I could give a bazillion excuses, but it boils down to: it was hot, the air conditioner is in my bedroom, and I am lazy. Really pretty much zero sewing happens around here in the summer, it is just too uncomfortable. So if I don't get the summer dresses and shorts sewn up in the spring when it is still chilly, it doesn't happen at all.

Case in point:

I did finally put this together last week. The temps dipped down to the high 70s/low 80s with a breeze, so I could stand to sit at the machine and, more importantly, use the iron. I was still sweaty by the time I finished, but at least it got done!

Here's a (purposely) blurry shot of Daughter helping a little friend of ours off the slide over the weekend. I just wanted to show more of the dress without splashing our friends' kid across the internet.

I can't find a link to the pattern on line right now and I'm too lazy to go upstairs and find it...if anyone has a burning desire for the exact number I can look it up. But I did a quick look around at Simplicity and McCall's and both have similar dresses shown right now in their current pattern collection. It's a very simple pattern...self-lined bodice, shoulder straps, and choice of one-piece full skirt or 3-tier even fuller skirt. I used the size 5 bodice pattern and the size 6 skirt pieces for length (the width is the same no matter the size). *Note* if you make this pattern, you can just cut width-of-fabric pieces for the skirt tiers. The pattern calls for even wider pieces but that is a waste. If you have typical 40-44" wide calico, like I used here, just cutting the lower 2 tiers from selvage edge to selvage edge works fine.

Also note that if you do not like gathering you will not enjoy making this. I cut two of these out at the beginning of summer, made one, and was very frustrated by the huge amount of gathering. For some reason this is a sewing skill I struggle with, and likely another good reason why the second dress sat unfinished for so long.

Moving on: here is a random action shot of me wearing one of the skirts I made earlier this year:

And finally, the reason for the post title...while still sewing summer dresses, I'm also working on fall and winter woolens (of course).

Listen, I have to apologize for the following photo, because it's awful and hurts your eyes. But the color of this wool (Knitpicks WotA "winter night") refuses to show up in a photograph without displaying an otherworldly glow:

Gah! Awful! But the sweater will hopefully be sweet. It's a top-down raglan (boring but reliable) in a size 4(!) for my growing boy. It will likely be a little too big at first, but should serve him well all winter. The weirdness of the color explains why I had a terrible time finding buttons to match (or even coordinate). We went with the little cars from Favorite Findings (with coupon, at Joann's). With an unusual shade of yarn, I find it best to go with completely non-matching buttons so it doesn't look like I tried and failed.

I would like to go work on this sweater some more, but instead I must clean the mac-n-cheese explosion from our kitchen table area. Maybe if I go really fast I can squeeze some crafting into naptime.....