• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Me…
  • Home
  • Blog
  • My Book Shelf
  • Let’s Work Together!
    • Parenting Philosophy
    • Parent Coaching
    • Parenting parties
    • Group Workshops
    • Webinars
    • Speaking

Thriving Parents

shifting Parenthood from barely surviving to thriving

  • parenting
    • Children
    • Raising Siblings
    • Family unit
    • Marriage/ Partnership
    • Connection
    • Parents/ Grandparents
  • a peek in our windows
    • Conversations in Our Home
  • in the Kitchen
    • freezer cooking
    • Kids in the Kitchen
    • Meal Planning
    • Recipes
      • Recipes
      • Gluten Free Recipes
  • in the home
    • Simple Solutions
    • Organization
    • Health
      • Celiac

My inspiration…

A lot of people have asked me how I got into sewing.  A lot more have asked how I have graduated to such big projects so soon.  The short answer is, I started small and kept on going.  And I couldn’t have done it without Andrea. 

My mother-in-law recently reminded me that when we moved into our house 5 years ago, I couldn’t sew.  Well, not that I couldn’t sew-sew, but I didn’t sew.  I remember finding curtains that I was in love with for my sliding glass door in the kitchen.  They were mostly white and had a yellow and green border on the bottom.  Because they’d be behind the kitchen table, I wanted the yellow and green border to be at the top.  I asked my mom to add a stitch to the bottom of the curtains so that they’d hold a curtain rod when I flipped them upside down.  It’s so funny to think I didn’t have the confidence to do that.

Within the next year I got a sewing machine for my birthday.  It was a Kenmore and pretty simple. It was all I needed.  I used to primarily to make burp cloths for people as baby gifts.  I might have hemmed a pair of pants.  I still hadn’t found any real projects that I thought I could do. 

After I had Caroline in 2008, I attempted to make a few dresses for the girls.  My first was horrendous.  I tried to use a pattern and it was a huge failure.  Patterns were not easy!  So I made my own pattern out of a dress Kate already owned.  That dress came out a tiny bit better but not much.  I don’t know if she wore it more than once. 

This is where Andrea comes in.  Sometimes this past summer I discovered a new website.  The Train to Crazy.  It is amazing!  It was full of great ideas and links to other great ideas.  It was also full of tutorials.  I LOVE tutorials!  I think one of the first tutorials of Andrea’s that I wanted to make was the Go To Dress.  Isn’t it so cute?  But as I read the directions, I realized I might be better off making the Simple Skirt.  So that’s where I began. 

Here was my first attempt:

Cute, right?  I mean the skirt, but of course, the girls are cute too!  Then I decided to get a bit crazy and embellish my 2nd attempt with a white ribbon across the bottom.

The quality of that picture isn’t so great and please disregard the non-matching shirt.  Caroline tried it on for me as soon as it came off the sewing machine.  These skirts were sooo easy to whip up that I whipped up a few more. 
Andrea’s website is the perfect place to go to if you are new to sewing or wondering if you could sew.  And the Simple Skirt is the perfect place to start.  I am actually planning on making one for myself when I have some time.

So head on over to The Train to Crazy today!

–k

Filed Under: inspiration, Uncategorized Tagged With: Uncategorized

Kristina Grum is a Certified Parent Educator who has over a decade of experience working with children, including being a classroom teacher. She currently teaches parenting classes in her local area and writes about shifting parenthood from barely surviving to thriving.

Primary Sidebar

connect with me


I’m looking for…

Join the Thriving Parents Community group on Facebook to find support and ideas from me and other positive parents

The dresses I can’t live without!

I love Amazon Prime

Categories

Archives

Footer

Hi… I’m Kristina!

Kristina Grum is a Certified Parent Educator who has over a decade of experience working with children, including being a classroom teacher. She currently teaches parenting classes in her local area and writes about shifting parenthood from barely surviving to thriving. Read More…

my favorite posts

Connecting with your kids only gets harder as they get older. Here are 3 ways to connect with your children individually.
Every day I do these 5 things to connect with my kids...
Mother’s Day can be stressful for everyone. Make it easy by giving one of these 5 gifts that most moms won’t tell you they want for Mother’s Day.

© 2025 · Thriving Parents