Ohhhhhh, I loved your comments on the last post. Loved them. Thank you, thank you. Little poems. I was right there. I dusted off my perfume bottles and wore honeysuckle on Sunday and it was a delight. Such a little thing. Thank you for taking the time to write.
Such a fairy dusting of blossoms and blooms we have had this week, as our plum tree flowers and the city sprouts. There is every kind of weather — sunshine, rain, wind, sunshine, rainbow, hail the size of peas (which Andy scooped into a cup and Amelia ate with dinner), clouds, heat, cold. Everything. Spring is storybookish here, and it's impossible not to love every minute of it. I love the beginning before the beginning, and this is it.
When I'm not outside, I'm sewing, sewing. Dresses appear like dandelions — not here in the morning, out on the lawn by lunchtime. Martha took pictures of all of the fabric she's sending and I said yes or no to each; later I realized that almost all of them were in the patchwork pillow she gave me for my birthday! Pretty calicos. I splurged and bought some new fabrics, too — linens and lawns and double gauzes for bloomers and smocks and Easter and Birthmother's and Mother's Day. Ribbons I just wanted to have. I spent my free hour yesterday going through my (quite extensive) vintage pattern collection, matching patterns with fabrics and trying to get sort of a well-rounded wardrobe will last through summer, and last into size four, as well. She's three, but I keep sewing into size four, refusing to pre-wash my fabrics and hoping everything will shrink just a bit to make it work for a while. The light blue dress at the top is from Martha's '80s stash, sewn with McCall's #3470 from 1972. I made the neckline into a rounded one, and added a ruffle made from a 22" strip of fabric that I edged with the scallop stitch on my machine. I'd seen this done on some of the French sewing blogs and thought it looked really pretty. It came out nice except that I think my ruffle strip needed to be longer and gathered a bit more, because it really wanted to flip up on her. I finished the back with a continuous lap and a snap. Getting that whole snap maker kit for size 14 snaps with the decorative snaps (pink, green, blue, and yellow) is turning out to be one of the best things I ever bought. I think I originally got it for baby bibs. But I'm loving it for the backs of dresses, and it's actually really fun to do the snaps with the hammer, etc. I put the snap right under the neck binding.
The golden daisy dress is baby wale corduroy, so soft, made from my standby peasant pattern, vintage Simplicity 4719. I like the way the arms and neck is cut on this — not too full, though the dress itself is full. I added a belt — more on this below. I added pockets, because m'lady has requested that every dress have pockets. For flowers, rocks, acorns, berries, rose hips, and her leftover sopping wet cinnamon roll from the bakery.
The navy dress is such cute fabric (by Elizabeth Olwen and called "Go Your Own Way" — I'm not the only one having a Stevie moment, yay), also baby wale corduroy. Perfect for just exactly this time of year, when it's still a bit chilly but you want flowers. The pattern is McCall's #2997 from 1971, and it has a front tab and two front pockets (which are hard to see). It had a tie belt, that tied in back, but that seemed like folly to me; there's no way she would keep that on, and would be sitting on it, etc. I made a little belt that was a continuous ring, gathered along the back, that slips over her head and sits around her tummy. She didn't like that either and only kept this on for about a minute. I broke my new rules with this dress — it has a zipper, it has set-in sleeves, it has a wide hem. But instead of lining the yoke I finished the neck with some vintage bias tape that was the perfect color blue, and in my stash was a vintage zipper that was also the perfect shade of blue, so, what can you do.
My sweet little hand-dyed bunting is from Sugarhouse Workshop, and those little lavender sprigs I picked up at JoAnn's the other day for a song. And we got the loveliest package all the way from Niina in Finland the other day. Amelia's been happily playing with Moomins and postcards and licorice nibs for three days. Mud on her hand, flowers in her hair. Spring is so good.
