Dollie Dressmaking

Fridays are rest and easy days for me and my daughter in our homeschooling journey. Originally, I intended Fridays to be the day for her to complete any unfinished assignments during the week. It has been a while though that she needed Fridays as an extra school day for her. She got all her assignments and tasks all finished up during the 4 days because for her, rest days are sacred. I like that she takes that time to relax and just have fun.

But then I remembered a passage I read from Charlotte Mason's Home Education:

Do not let the children pass a day without distinct efforts, intellectual, moral, volitional; let them brace themselves to understand; let them compel themselves to do and to bear; and let them do right at the sacrifice of ease and pleasure: and this for many higher reasons, but, in the first and lowest place, that the mere physical organ of mind and will may grow vigorous with work.

My daughter spends her rest days not actually just lollygagging and dawdling. I usually find her in a corner, her nose in a book. Sometimes she would have either a magnifying glass in her hand or the binoculars, just looking around all over the house, looking for interesting finds. I remember when she was in her book-making phase, she makes all these cute storybooks, even sold me one.

After some time, she took on drawing and other crafts. I figured since she's at the point where she herself wants to discover new things she can do, I thought about adding a new skill in her arsenal. I considered teaching crocheting once again. She managed to make chains the last time we tried but after assessing the vibe, I feel it's too soon to try crocheting again. She still needs to learn a lot of other skills before we can try crocheting once more.

For today, we tried dressmaking. Since we have tiny hands at work today, we started making dresses for her little dollies. 2 years ago, @jonalyn2020 gifted her some dolls for christmas. Ever since, my little one has been requesting that I make different kinds of crochet clothes for the little dolls. Then she also bought another set of dolls to make the Dollie Family complete. Now there's a mommy doll, daddy doll, and kiddie dolls. I have made quite a few dresses but with all the new dollies, I can't keep up anymore.

So I figured I should teach her to make dresses. At first, she made paper dresses only. All just because I was scared to make her handle needles. I decided it's time I let go of all of my fears when it comes to educating my daughter. Not all at once, but having her learn dressmaking, stitching clothes using needles, that's one step away from the fear.

For our little project today, I had her draw the designs she wanted to use for her dolls. She made designs for 6 dolls. We made 2 sets. One for Mary and one for Maria. The fabric we used are recycled from her old clothes that were already too small for her. I've been meaning to drop those off at donation places but I just couldn't find the time. So now, we got 2 small tiny little shirt and skirt from her old clothes.

This is the first set of clothes she's made so I made 40% of the effort for this project. I showed her how to cut the fabric, how measure the body of her models, how to stitch. She really is a quick study, after getting over her fear of using the pointy needle, she was able to complete all the stitches on all the clothes. She needed a bit of assistance but she exceeded my expectations in this project. She got hurt a bit, she was amazed at how the needle tore open a layer of her skin but it did not bleed. She then told me that it was because our skin has 2 layers. She's been binge reading all about the human anatomy these past few days, our sofa is full of books about skin, hair, brain, and so much more.

After we were done with the dresses, I saw her playing with her toys. She thinks and talks like a grown up, sometimes argues like a grown up, but deep inside, she still is a little girl. I can see her happiness and pride beaming on her face knowing that those dresses that her dolls are wearing are all her creations. That's why I make sure that when we do work on projects, it's something that she can use. And when we do make projects like this, it is her that works on the creation. It gives her a sense of accomplishment which is very empowering especially for children.

She's excited for her next dress design. I am also excited to work on it with her if she'll allow me to. I know she still needs assistance in the fabric cutting department but pretty soon, she'll have that handled all by herself too. And it's fine. I'm just here to show her how things are done anyway. At the end of the day, it's her design, it's her project.