A Fun Afternoon Project

For several years I've had a "patio dress" from Sears that I put on in the morning so I'm presentable, without actually getting dressed.  We used to have housecoats, and then we had muumuus, and this is just an updated muumuu.  But it was getting pretty ragged and needed to be replaced.  

About two weeks ago a friend gave me a whole whack of material samples, 100% cottons, and I had a great time sorting through them.  One interesting group was 14" long pieces of width of fabric (42") gold polkadot fabric with changing hues across the width.  This was just the ticket for a replacement of the patio dress.  

I cut the old "dress" apart to use as a pattern and in no time, serging the seams, had the new one ready.  Then I spent two hours handsewing the bindings and the hem.  The result is a really jazzy garment I'm calling a "pop-on".  Just pop it on when you get up in the morning.  Here's a front and back view, since the colors change throughout.

Can't help but feeling cheerful when you're dressed in something this colorful!

Today I spent time in the garden.  Put in 160 Sweet Spanish Onion sets.  The potatoes are showing in several places, nice dark green, crinkled leaves.  But the first planting I did several weeks ago of cold weather crops never put up one leaf.  I think it was just too cold and too dry for them to germinate, so this afternoon I planted some more spinach, lettuce and snap peas.  I also put in the two zucchini plants, two acorn squash, and two cucumber plants that had been started in the greenhouse.  But the parsley is going to live on the window sill of the laundry room.  Last summer the parsley was doing fine in the garden and then suddenly died.  We couldn't figure out what was wrong, but we were without parsley all winter. So this year I'll put it in a good sized pot on the windowsill right away.