My Next Finish-A-Long and A Day Out

Hello Everyone! I have a finish to share with you today, but first, congratulations to Leslie who won the box of Aurifil Thread for the I Love Home BOM Block 1 Giveaway.

Today, I have a finish for the 2017 Finish-A-Long, the Moneta Dress by Colette Patterns. You can find my list here.

Overall, this was a very easy pattern. Only six pieces.

The fabric is a Millie Fleur knit designed by bari j for Art Gallery Fabrics. This fabric is wonderful. It’s soft and has a nice drape to it. It’s 95% cotton and 5% spandex. It is definitely not the few knits I used many years ago.

The only small problem I had was with the clear elastic in the waist band.

The directions called for measuring the waist on the bodice, then cutting the elastic several inches longer. You stretched the elastic as you sewed it on, which gives you the stretch. I did this one other time, but the elastic I used was wider and normal elastic. I don’t know if I was pulling to hard on it, but after doing one side okay, the elastic started breaking on me. I ended up cutting another piece that was the length of half the waist size and that worked better. If I make this dress again, that’s what I’ll do from the start.

On another note, my daughter was home for a week, and because most of her friends were already back in school, she spent most of her time with us. In one of my recent posts I mentioned that she wanted to go to the Georgia Aquarium. We decided to go to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga instead! We haven’t been there since she was in elementary school.

This aquarium is different in that it starts you at the source of a river and guides you to the ocean.

Since we were there last, they have added another building that includes a lemur exhibit, an ocean aquarium and a butterfly house.

I ended up with a hitchhiker on my back that didn’t want to come off in the butterfly house. My daughter was finally able to get the butterfly to move to her finger.

She had a hard time getting it off her finger, too. It’s a great aquarium to visit if you are in the area.

After the aquarium and lunch, we decided to go home by way of Lookout Mountain. We stopped at Lookout Mountain Hang Gliding.It was a beautiful day! No haze and low humidity.

For some reason, my daughter likes to sit on the edge of high places. We’ve watched them hang glide from here before. Not me, that’s a pretty big drop off the edge. There were some hang gliders that were starting to set up for the afternoon, but we had to continue on our way.

Cloudland Canyon State Park is just a little further south, still on Lookout Mountain.

We made a quick stop just to have a peak at the overlook. You could hear the waterfalls and we saw another one on the west rim that we didn’t know was there. I guess we’ve had enough rain this summer for it to have water in it. When my husband and I camped here last October, we hiked the the Sitton Gulch Trail that starts at the bottom of the canyon and ends at the waterfall. You can see the break in the trees where we hiked. You can read about that trip here.

I’ll be back a little later in the week with another finish to share. I need to get some pictures first. Thanks for stopping by.