If you happen to be a church-goer of the LDS (Mormon) variety, you might just recognize the post title as belonging to the good ol' Mormon Pioneer Handcart song. :)
From 1846-1869, roughly 70,000 Mormon pioneers trekked over 1,300 miles--many walked the entire way--across the Great Plains to reach the Salt Lake Valley where they could live and worship their religion in peace.
Since then, there have been many "Pioneer Trek" reenactments done by members of the church decked out in full pioneer atire and pulling authentic handcarts across the same path that the early Pioneers trekked through.
Well, this summer the church congregations in our area in Alaska are doing our own Pioneer Trek, only instead of walking across the dusty plains, our youth will be pulling/pushing handcarts through icy streams and the rugged Alaskan landscape. So much work and preparation has gone into this trek: the youth are required to sew their own Pioneer clothing (bonnets, dresses, aprons, pants, shirts), and build handcarts to load their supplies onto. They have also been required to go on long hikes to help them get physically prepared for the many miles they will walk during the trek.
While I will sadly not be joining the youth on this trek, I have had the duty of helping the girls to sew their clothing.
And I am a non-sewer, so it has been a very interesting process!
We made the aprons out of old bedsheets (in true Pioneer-repurposing fashion!) without a pattern. Yikes!
After weeks of working on these babies and lots of laughing as we tried to figure out what the heck we were doing, we FINALLY finished the aprons last night.
Victory!
The girls and I were mighty proud.
Here are a few of them, decked out in their aprons pulled up under their boobs "like old ladies".
Bahahahaha!
Bahahahaha!
I love these girls. They keep me young. :)
I can't wait to see their entire outfits come together and to see pictures of their Pioneer adventures.
(To learn more about our Pioneer heritage, go here.)
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