This is an amazing dress, an example of what I would call heirloom recycling. Whoever made this dress embraced the “green” philosophy–or simply needed a white dress and had a pretty tablecloth. Whatever.
On a yard sale/church bazaar Saturday outing, a mother/daughter duo came across this dress. Well aware of my penchant for antique textiles, the shopping duo decided then and there to gift it to me. What wonderful friends! And, of course, I was delighted. Continue reading
I was so pleased with the finished look of the buttons on my granddaughter’s shadow smocked Easter dress. It was a stroke of luck that they surfaced as I pillaged through my bag of pearl buttons. I had forgotten all about them.
Purchased many years ago at an antique mall with an extensive needlework/notions booth, I had no plan for these interesting buttons. There is no shank, just threads wrapped from side to side, as if the fibers were stitched over a ring. But the ivory color seemed to work for this dress with the ivory lace, entredeux and featherstitching. Continue reading
Happy Easter!!
I am soooo pleased to be done with my granddaughter’s Easter dress. I learned a LOT about shadow smocking and have some tips to share with those of you who might like to try it.
Right now, there is still too much to do for me to take the time to give you the details, but I will later. Our children and grandchildren have begun to arrive so we are savoring the time with them.
Meanwhile, I just finished making 50 cream cheese and jelly sandwiches (on raisin bread) for the Bunny Lunch at church tomorrow. New shorts outfits for the boys are done. But since I spent so much time on Laurel’s dress, she iwill be wearing the ladybug dress from last year for the lunch. Continue reading
Posted in girls, hand embroidery, heirloom sewing, smocking
“Almost 20 years ago, they (the lace portraits shown below) were purchased at an estate sale, where they were pinned to a sheet of cardboard. If any interest is expressed, I’ll write a post about that once-in-a-lifetime textile shopping spree. Occasionally, I still dream about it!” 
This quote is from an earlier post about these antique lace portraits. Readers did ask for the story. So let me tell you………
This was the most amazing estate sale I had ever seen, or ever will again. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime shopping opportunity to acquire beautiful things.
First, a few details about one of my finds at that sale, a set of 6 placemats and napkins with a matching table runner.
Shadow embroidered placemat with surface embroidery and hemstitching.
The shadow embroidery on this luncheon set is absolutely flawless. Worked in two shades of blue, the stitches are so tiny and so regularly spaced that it’s hard to believe this is handwork.
The surface embroidery is equally remarkable.
The set of six placemats and napkins includes a table runner. With my Blue Willow china, it makes a pretty setting for lunch. For tea, flow blue cups are elegant. My 7 yo granddaughter Laurel and I enjoy having tea on the breakfast porch with these cups. Robert, 6, sometimes joins us but prefers a no nonsense Gator mug.
A pair of these cups was purchased at the same time.
So here is the story about how this all came about. My mother’s friend, Marybelle, had a daughter who did estate sales and auctions in New England. She didn’t liquidate little Ma & Pa farms or cottages but rather huge estates with names like Rockefeller or DuPont. Mind you, I don’t know the surnames, but the implication was that they were of this status, rich and/or famous.
Suzanne bought these, then duplicated the technique. It is featured in a Creative Needle article.
The story goes that the 4 or 5 adult children had already stripped the house of everything that interested them, which apparently was the bulk of the mansion’s contents. Then, at the auction, more than $5 million worth of items were sold. The leftovers were sent to Marybelle, a well-connected Southern lady, who was to offer them to her friends. Fortunately for me, my mother was one of her friends. Continue reading
This is another of the antique daygowns that hang on a twig swag in my bluebird nursery ( Nana’s Nursery). Like the others, this yellow beauty has a wealth of sweet details and a variety of well-executed techniques.
Teeny, tiny tucks, hand embroidery, fagoting, pin stitch, lace insertion and edge, French seams…all done by hand. I’ve done some handwork, but I wouldn’t begin to know how to go about making twenty four 1/16″ tucks finish out at 1 1/2″ wide. With a 9-groove pin tuck foot and a 1.6/60 twin needle, great results can be had. But I am quite certain that no one could get 24 tucks to measure out at 1 1/2″ by machine. If you disagree, take that as a challenge.
The feature that initially attracted me to this dress was the fagoted lace collar. Beginning with a 3/8″ wide two-layer collar, two rows of lace were fagoted together and joined to the batiste collar. The stitches are tiny and perfect. Continue reading
It’s time to get started on Easter outfits for the grandchildren. In fact, I woulda/shoulda started before now but I am busy working up a design and embroidering tee shirts for Robert and Laurel’s Odyssey of the Mind competition next week.
I’m especially grateful for the 1000 stitches per minute that my Brother Duetta puts out. The shirts are pretty ugly, but beautifully embroidered (film at 11, or after the competition). There are other must-do’s but very soon I MUST at least have a plan.
For sewing mothers and grandmothers, there is no greater thrill than to see their little darlings decked out in their most elaborate and special garments, created with love in every stitch.
Those of us who have labored long and hard on these very special holiday garments often find that specific recollections of each Resurrection Sunday are tied more closely to the Easter outfits made that year than to the calendar year. Continue reading
Heirloom sewn children’s clothing is nearly timeless. Bishops, basic yokes and button-ons have been around for so long that you can hardly tell the old from the new.
Laurel, my 7 year old granddaughter, wore this 28 year old dress to church last Sunday. Perhaps you can tell that it is not new because it is not black and hot pink or lime green. But still, I think the color and style do not scream “HAND ME DOWN!!!” (Please advise me if I am wrong.)
The dress was made for my daughter Rebecca in 1984. The fabric is a Rose and Hubble lawn. How I wish that company were still in business, making almost Liberty quality lawns!
The collar is ivory linen with hand fagoting stitches joining the bias strip and lace edging. The same edging is fagoted to the linen sleeve binding.
NOTE: On SewForum, I posted a picture and description of a daygown with fagoted lace. The word “fagoted” was “beeped.” I wonder what their censorship program would do with “roll and whip?”
I need to mend the mitre on the bias.
Posted in girls, hand embroidery, heirloom sewing, machine embroidery
There are so many wonderful opportunities for children to wear their holiday outfits, from the hometown Christmas parade to Santa’s lap pictures to church services and Christmas dinner. Some of these events are casual while others require more formal wear. Given enough time, I like to make seasonal garments for my grandchildren to meet more than one of these occasions.
We all know the time saving benefits of starting with ready made fleece or tee shirts. But when I found this monotone smocked Ralph Lauren dress, marked down by 75%, I began to look at ready-to-wear with a broader view. I knew that with the addition of a little red and green hand embroidery, it would make a great Christmas dress for my 5 year old granddaughter.
Personally, I love tone-on-tone embroidery. But the ivory smocking, ivory silk ribbon embroidery and ivory bullions were just lost on this little ivory dress. Unless you viewed the child at her eye level, you would probably not even notice that the dress was smocked. Continue reading
Posted in girls, hand embroidery, smocking, White Wednesday
NEWS FLASH! The Mary Frances Adventures Among the Thimble People sewing book is still available as a free download from this fabulous homeschooler site. Not only that but now you can also download–for free–the Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book These were promoted as one-day only freebies. But apparently, they remain on the site for some time.
This week has been filled with delightful visits from two South Carolina friends. First, Terri Click (The Thrifty Needle blog) of Conway arrived after teaching in Orlando. I’ll share more of that visit in a future post. She snapped some pictures and has posted photos of my sewing room (gulp….) on her blog.
Then just yesterday my high school friend Carole of Bluffton stopped by with her husband on their way to DisneyWorld.
Having planned to serve lunch on the breakfast porch, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to use this charming vintage tablecloth, which is just the right size. It teamed up nicely with my favorite, everyday Blue Willow china and this robust African violet. When Suzanne Sawko gave me the pot, the plant was no more than three tiny rooted starts. Now it overflows the container and blooms profusely, nonstop. I’m so pleased with it. Continue reading
The opportunity to post a White Wednesday blog along with others at Faded Charm motivated me to plunder through my handkerchief collection again. As I said in an earlier post, there are few genres of needlework that include so many wonderful techniques as handkerchiefs.
In a relatively small area, spectacular stitching is often combined with extraordinary edgings. These beauties are tiny treasures.
Note the unusual shaping of the linen and the delicate handmade edge.
This small silk organza hanky is one of my favorites, though it would be pretty useless if you had a cold. The drawn thread work is as delicate as the fairy weight lace edging. Continue reading