to ella on your first christmas, *heart* mom

This is little Ella’s Christmas present from me.  A bit late, YES, BUT it has been complete for a couple months, I just didn’t get around to taking her closeup.  I feel like I must explain the delay, really I have some great excuses!

You see, I received my sewing machine a year ago this week for my birthday, Ella was just four months old!  Not the best time to start a new hobby as involved as sewing with nobody to teach me except my trusty book from Lori!  Well, I didn’t get around to sewing until October, at which time I thought I would commit myself to the loony bin and MAKE everybody Christmas and Birthday presents!  Somewhere in there I also thought I would hit myself over the head and commit myself all together and make Ella this perfect little Olive by Hillary Lang at Wee Wonderfuls.  Needless to say, I didn’t actually start until a couple days AFTER Christmas… after all, 6 month ella won’t know any different, right?  Well, Ms. Olive here turned out to be much more difficult than this inexperienced sewist expected, and after the holiday marathon I wasn’t exactly committed to hanging in there with it.  Somewhere along the way a few months into procrastinating I regained my confidence and popped it out in a night, but then her rear remained un-sewn for a good month until I figured that out too– again, not too committed to the project.  And here we are August, Ella is nine months older, Olive is finally getting photographed, and technically still has no face…

There is a bit of an explanation behind her facelessness too.

Since she sat so long on my mantle in various stages of being complete, visitors started to comment how much they liked her NOT having a face.  It seemed a bit crazy at first, and honestly I had every intention of giving her a cute little face, but the idea started to grow on me and here we are.  That does not mean that she will never have a face, just that right now Ella is enjoying her quite a bit without one.  I made sure to give her the big floppy bow she was suppose to have but I made it out of satin because I knew it was sure to be her favorite part.  Turns out I was right.

I thought it fitting to also attach a little something so she doesn’t get lost in the shuffle through the years, I think it turned out pretty nifty.  I just used 100% cotton fabric made to be printed on, like this, and viola instant tag.

In hindsight this project wasn’t all that difficult, there were just a couple sticky spots that I think I gave up on too easily.  I learned a lot, I would totally do it again, and I think I am better equipped to do other tricky softies in future.

Hopefully it won’t take me this long next Christmas, cross your fingers!

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