Saturday, April 21, 2012

Baby Boots & Shoes

Now, I just want to be clear that the purpose of this blog is to shamelessly brag about how my wife is awesome and does fun and creative stuff. You may see something and think, "I wish I knew how she did that," or "Why didn't he include any instructions?"

The reason I don't include any instructions is two-fold: 

1. Like I said, I'm just bragging.
2. I have no idea how she did some of this stuff, and to my knowledge, my wife still doesn't know that I'm blogging about her coolness.

With that said, the Mrs. started learning how to really sew about 2-3 years ago, soon after my daughter was born. To be honest, she wasn't very good. However, she started with simple projects that came with simple patterns (and she would call her mother for help translating sewing patterns into plain English). Once she figured out how to follow a pattern, she started experimenting with more complex projects. 

Her first "major" sewing project was making these babies.


She found a pattern online for $15 and went to town. If I were to guess, I would say these boots probably took her at least 10 hours of work over a week or more. I can remember a couple of times when she would think she was almost done with a section before she realized she had sewn something on backwards or missed a step.

But she kept with it and finally finished. She was obviously satisfied enough with the results that she tried a few more.






And after she figured the boots out, she decided to try shoes.







I think she found the pattern to these shoes online for free, but I can't be sure. Eventually she was able to whip up a pair of baby boots or shoes in two hours (a far cry from the original 10+ hours), and she decided she would start selling them on Etsy and at local farmer's markets and make a little business out of it. However, it only took a few weeks before she realized that, at least for her, making these boots and shoes for money made it lose its intrinsic value, or the inherent enjoyment she got from doing the project. What used to be an enjoyable creative outlet was now a job.

So she stopped.

Well, she stopped selling them anyway. Now she just makes boots and shoes for the occasional baby shower.





If you're really interested in knowing more about the pattern she used for these, I can probably look through her sewing stuff and find more information. Otherwise, it would probably be more effective to google it. :)

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