It Takes Two

They say "once begun is halfway done," but when it came to my daughter's Back-to-School outfit, "Done" turned out to be only halfway there. Why, you ask? Well because in the final stages of finishing my daughter's top, I found out what, exactly, she was dreaming of pairing all my hard work WITH. Namely, the pink leaf skirt she made last April.

I'm pretty liberal about mixing colors, but this was a bit much even for me. Not to mention the whole swing top + skirt silhouette combo reads like a Christmas tree. So, with less than 48 hours to go before back-to-school started, I plowed through the rest of the Ruthie and plotted ways to switch my daughter's allegiance.

Fortunately, indecision at the quilt shop had left me with extra coordinating fabric, and a kind soul on the VFT Facebook Group was able to confirm that the VFT Allie was both on sale (20% off) and a fairly quick & easy sew if you skipped the bow part.

So quick and easy, in fact, that I came up with a last-minute idea: perhaps my daughter was so attached to that pink leaf skirt because *she'd* sewed it. Did I think she was up for sewing an Allie? In the end I took a leap of faith and found that yes, she was.

I still handled the iron, the scissors, and the serger. Together we hemmed everything in the flat, and I finished the waistband when the elastic back looked challenging. But she carefully guided it through the machine herself, and handled lots of the pins. As the hour got late, she still told me she wanted to wear her pink skirt. But having learned to play the long game, I finished the shorts myself after she went to bed and laid BOTH choices alongside her Ruthie top for the morning. When she came downstairs the next morning, this is how she was dressed:

I count that as a definite win. My first-grader got to show up in an outfit she helped make, and I got a photo for the album where everything is matching!

Well, if you ignore the backpack, anyway. ;-)