Instant Heirloom

(This post was begun in October but left unfinished because Life has been too eventful for blogging. )

Whew! Still no quilting.

In July my dad followed up with another stroke, and my mum and I were very busy trying to take care of him at home. After an exhausting week we discovered that his insurance would cover in-patient therapy at Casa Colina, a facility about which I cannot say enough good things. My dad is an out-patient now; we schelp him over there twice a week for therapy. Since I live next door to my parents, I'm over there many times a day to help my mother with my dad: bathing, dressing, supervising (since he's not supposed to walk alone), and making sure he does his daily exercises.

However, I did complete one sewing project: making a christening gown from my mother's wedding dress. It was a fun, albeit nerve-wracking, project. The first difficulty was simply squeezing out the time to work on it. (Taking care of my dad is like having another part-time job.) The second was the stress of Great Expectations. My mother and sister are firmly convinced that I am an amazing seamstress, an assessment which I do not completely share.

The gown was being made for my sister's first granddaughter. Her son and daughter-in-law have been married for about 10 years and hitherto have been without offspring. My poor sister, who definitely has the adoring grandmother gene, has been forced to confine her affections to chihuahuas. But now she is being presented with not one, but two grandchildren -- twins, a boy and a girl. Well, it doesn't get much better than that!

The only problem was that they had but one christening gown, the gown which my sister's son wore when he was baptized. That was also the same gown which my father wore when he was an infant, so it was 82 years old -- definitely a family heirloom. Anyway, that gown could be used by the boy, but what to do about the girl?

Rather hesitantly my sister approached my mom and me and asked if we'd be willing to make my mom's wedding dress (which had long been in my sister's keeping) into a gown for the girl twin. Voila, instant heirloom! My mom thought it was a splendid idea and, grabbing her seam ripper, immediately reduced the gown to yardage.

My mother's gown was designed and made by a friend back in the early 1950s and featured a layer of taffeta covered by a sheer fabric with a floral lace edge. I wanted the baby girl's dress to show off the fabric to advantage and yet echo the look of her brother's antique gown. I used a pattern from the late '70s, Simplicity 8971, as a basis for the dress and hat.

I lengthened the gown a bit and dispensed with the horitzontal tucks. Instead of the gathered sleeves, I made loose straight sleeves out of the floral lace. The pattern's hat is made out of wide eyelet lace. My hat was made and lined out of the taffeta with an overlay of the sheer floral lace. (Click on the picture of the hat at the beginning of the post to get a better look at the lace.)

Instead of pintucks on the bodice, I put lace beading threaded with pink ribbon. (The antique boy's gown had lace beading with blue ribbon.) At this point I felt the dress was finished, but my mom felt it needed a bit more, so she added the two vertical rows of lace beading and pink ribbon on the skirt. As it had to be added by hand, it was rather finicky work.

The last picture gives a close up view of the floral lace which I used as the bottom edge of the overskirt. (The under layers of the bodice and skirt are made of the taffeta.)

Both dresses were presented to my sister's daughter-on-law at her baby shower, and I can definitely say that all of the stress and anxiety that went into the making of this dress were as nought when weighed against the expression on her face when she opened the packages. Definitely worth it.

Time Out For Garment Sewing

Not much time for sewing these days as I've been busy grading end of the semester papers for my students and also helping to take care of elderly relations. This past month my aunt, the one with Alzheimer's whom I previously wrote about here, fell down and broke her hip. Then my father had a mini-stroke, and as soon as he got out of the hospital, my mum came down a bad case of stomach flu.

So my sewing impulse has been confined to the vicarious thrill of browsing sewing blogs, particularly those devoted to vintage patterns. Though I feel a little dinosaur-like when reading about vintage patterns from the '70s. Hey, I was alive then! Anyway, I finally succumbed. I bought Simplicity 8667 from 1978. It looks like a nice basic dress (with pockets -- yay!) which is something I could really use right now for work. I hope it's not too young looking for me. Currently my wardrobe consists of a few extremely worn denim dresses and some skirts that have become too big in the waist thanks to back-elastic that has become limp with age.

My only problem with the pattern is that I I bought a size 11/12 Young Jr. Teen based on what I thought was my bust measurement which falls between the 9/10 and 11/12. But due to an inadvertent weight loss, my bust is now smaller than I thought. (At my last doctor's visit I was down to 113 -- yikes!) And in fact, I used to wear a 9/10 back in the '70s. I just thought that after four pregnancies my shape had changed enough that I'd need the larger size. Now I'm not so sure.

I've consulted with the folks at PatternReview.com, and I think there's nothing for it but to make a muslin. Dang!

By the way, I bought the pattern from Ditzy Prints and I was very pleased with the transaction.

So, Sew Retro!

I was at the Scripps College reunion a couple weeks ago and, looking up from my lonely enjoyment of the excellent hors d'oeuvres at the president's reception, caught sight of a young woman from the class of 2004 who was wearing a beautifully retro dress with a tight fitting bodice and a full, gathered skirt.

"I love your dress -- it's so retro!" I don't find it very easy to talk to strangers, but now and then circumstances will move me to burst forth before I've a chance to think. In order to excuse my intrusion, I mentioned that lately I'd been looking at a lot of vintage patterns online. And as it turned out, we both sewed (though she hadn't made the dress she was wearing), quilted, and had been involved in homeschooling. (I'm a retired homeschooling mom; she grew up as a homeschooling student.) So it turned out to be one of the most interesting interactions I had during the whole weekend.

I've always thought that clothes from the past were more interesting than contemporary fasion, but until I started poking around the Internet, I had no idea there were so many people sewing vintage patterns. One of my favorite sites is Sew Retro, a blog to which many sewing bloggers contribute, often linking back to their own blogs for additional pictures and sewing details about a particular project. I love seeing how they've solved various sewing problems, and seeing how their fabric and color choices can totally change the "look and feel" of a vintage garment design. However, I sometimes feel a little odd when one of the bloggers is raving about having scored a fantastic vintage pattern from the 1970s on eBay. Vintage? Um, I think I have some of those in the bottom of my pattern bin. (And as far as I'm concerned they can stay there. The '70s were an ugly decade.)

Another site I've just begun exploring is the Vintage Sewing Patterns Wiki. Each entry features a picture of the pattern envelope and, if available, links to reviews of or blog posts about the pattern, and a gallery into which members can upload photos of the garments they've made from the pattern. Patterns are catagorized not only by brand name and number, but also by type of garment (i.e. dress, jacket, etc.) and even design features such as full skirt, scallops, or shawl collar. A few entries even have a bit of history, such as Butterick 6015 which was a run-away best seller in the '50s. (It's currently been re-issued as Butterick 4790.)

Well, if I can just stop hitting their "View Random Page" link, maybe I'll dig out some of those old patterns and upload them.

This Spinning Star from Come Quilt With Me caught my eye during Jo-Ann's "50% off quilting supplies" sale. Normally, I'm a template-free, rotary cutting girl, but curved piecing is another story. I love curved piecing, especially since discovering that it's easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy when you do it by hand. But I hate making my own templates, so I thought I'd give this one a try.

Previously I've had very good experiences with Ardco templates. Their metal window-templates are the best ever if you don't mind tracing with a pencil and cutting out with sissors. (They say you can use their templates (which also come in non-window versions) for rotary cutting, but the mere thought gives me the willies.) Since the Come Quilt With Me templates are thick acrylic, I decided I'd try rotary cutting with it and -- gasp! -- machine piecing the block. The little slots should make it easy to mark and join the pieces accurately.

As for fabrics, I haven't decided yet whether to go for modern brights or '30s pastels.

Poetry Quilts

Winter Lights: A Season in Poems & Quilts by Anna Grossnickle Hines.

One of the the perks of my job as a library aide is discovering unusual picture books. This one caught my eye because the author-illustrator is a quilter.

Winter, and special lights and holidays which brighten the darkest days of the year, is the theme of this book of poems. The author's subjects range from Hanukkah to the Winter Solstice to the fireworks of the Chinese New Year to the farolitos which light the way for Mary and Joseph during Christmas celebrations in the Southwest.

I must admit that I preferred the illustrations to the text because my taste in poetry is rather hobbitish and traditional. But I love these quilts! They simply glow with light thanks to the author's judicious use dark fabrics, as in the Christmas tree quilt on the cover. (See above.)

And the piecing techniques which she has chosen for each quilt are also well suited to the subject of each poem. For example, the twisted log cabin blocks which Hines uses to illustrate "Fireplace" and "One Little Candle" bring unexpected movement to her representation of flickering, dancing flames. The aurora borealis is appropriately suggested by the bargello quilt illustrating "A Sight to See." And there is a happy marriage of both color and technique in the author's use of hand-dyes in her appliqued quilt, "Protest," which illustrates the glow of the setting sun in the winter sky and the soft snowy hills.

I would love to show you what I mean by by posting pictures of the quilts I've just referred to, but I am scrupulously respecting Hines's copyright. Fortunately, you can see what I mean by visiting her website, here. Click on the link, "For Quilters" and then scroll down and click on the third book, Winter Lights, to see how she designed and made each quilt. (Unfortunately, the design of the website prevents me from giving you a direct link to the quilts.) Now that I know that she has two other quilt-illustrated books, I plan to look them up at my library.

By the way, one poem in particular resonated in my book lover's soul. It dealt with a furtive pleasure with which I am sure all readers can sympathize.

Lights Out

I pull the covers
over my head
and let out a few snores
for good measure . . .
then snap on my flashlight
and open my book.
Now this is
reading for pleasure!

Be sure to look at the accompanying quilt on her website!

Got My Fabric

None of the quilt stores around here carry much in the way of Civil War prints, so when I went back to my old stomping grounds see my tax guy, I stopped in at the Quilt Emporium in Woodland Hills. They have a good selection of repro prints, and I was finally able to get the rest of the fabric I need for my Double Delight quilt. The two browns and the cheddar which I bought are in the lower left hand corner of the photo. The shirting prints are from my stash. So are the blues -- which are not authentic, but I'm going to try them out in an effort to bust some stash.

I see that I haven't posted in over a month. What is that in blog-years? A century? Unfortunately, fast and furious quilting has not been the reason for my absence. In fact, I've accomplished almost nothing creative except for some sporadic work on my string pieced stars. (I'm still trying to work out the best way to construct these. I used a Jo-Ann's coupon to buy an EZ 45° Diamond and I'm going back to Harriet Hargrave's construction method.)

Back From the Dead!

I see that I haven't posted in over a month. What is that in blog-years? A century?

Fast and furious quilting has not been the reason for my absence. In fact, I've accomplished almost nothing creative except for some sporadic work on my string pieced stars. (I'm still trying to work out the best way to construct them. Recently, I used a Jo-Ann's coupon to buy an EZ 45° Diamond, and I'm going back to Harriet Hargrave's construction method.)

Unfortunately, my elbow still bothers me off and on. The physical therapist says it probably won't be completely healed until June. Every now and then I feel a sharp burning pain in it similar to what I felt in original injury, though not quite as intense. Then I have to take care how I move, apply cold or heat, and take plenty of Advil. The most recent incident was this past Saturday and Sunday. Sigh!

What else have I been doing? Working at the library, grading student papers, helping my mom who just had minor surgery, making a daily visit to my aunt who has Alzheimer's Disease, and hanging out on the American Diabetes Association's forum for adults with Type 2 diabetes.

Yes, the shoe has finally dropped. Diabetes runs in my dad's family, so this is not a total surprise. Fortunately, I seem to be in the early stages and hope that a proactive approach will delay or prevent the complications that frequently go with the Big D.