I’m busy making spa wraps for Laurel’s 10 birthday party guests and their AG dolls. Then I’ll start embroidering button covers for my Hope Yoder button-up machine. They will be attached to ponytail holders but the girls will do that at the party. Lots of fun, but nothing to show or report now. So once again, I am posting one of Judy Day’s projects.
Her 8 year-old granddaughters are just 3 months apart in age. Making gorgeous, matching birthday dresses, along with gorgeous matching doll dresses and hairbows is an annual challenge for their long-distance grandmother. Of course, there are also matching Christmas and Easter dresses. If you haven’t seen Judy’s lovely creations, click on Judy Day’s Creations in the menu on the right.
As happens so often, Creative Needle magazine provided the inspiration for the birthday dresses. Judy told me that the Sept./Oct. 2001 issue had been waiting its turn on her cutting table since before the girls were born. That’s where she stacks “I definitely want to make that!” ideas. Continue reading →
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.
front bodice motif
Remarkable for a number of reasons, the dress is made from a beautifully stitched fine linen tablecloth. It was not immediately obvious that the cutwork, surface embroidery and needle lace inserts were not embellishments meant for a special gown.
My first clue that this was a tablecloth was when I discovered the embroidery at the neckline, under the bodice overlay. Hmmmmmmm….no reason to embroider there.
It is pieced together so artfully that the placement of the designs and the needle lace seem well planned for a dress. The skirt was cut so that the cutwork lines up at the side seams. The unusual sleeve style incorporates a corner of the cloth.
At the upcoming mother-daughter church luncheon, a display of vintage wedding gowns and dresses will be featured. So I pulled out the dress and proceeded to launder it. That’s when I discovered the embroidery at the neckline and the non-standard skirt attachment.
Close examination convinced me that the cutwork and embroidery were done by someone other than the seamstress who constructed this garment. There is a noticeable disparity between the workmanship of the handwork and the construction.
This is most noticeable with lace attachment. It is simply straight stitched onto what appears to be a machine rolled and whipped edge at the hem and sleeve edges.
However, on the front and back yoke overlays, which are lined, it is very nicely hand stitched.
The color has been edited to show stitches joining lace to overlay.
It seems to me that the short opening at the center back would make it very difficult to put the dress on. But it’s likely that the seamstress/designer didn’t want break the horizontal line of the lace on the overlay.
Of course, I wonder for what special occasion was the dress made? It could have been a confirmation or graduation dress. It even could have been a wedding dress. Whatever.
Scarlet O’Hara would have found this a welcome, comfortable change from her velvet drapery dress.
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 →
My granddaughter’s shadow smocked Easter dress was inspired by Kay Guiles’ article in Sew Beautiful, Easter, 1998. In fact, the dress is nearly identical to one of the sample garments shown in that article. I take no credit whatsoever for the design or technique.
The only changes made to Laurel’s dress are the addition of lace insertion in the skirt and the substitution of a different embroidery design that included both silk ribbon and DMC floss.
Shadow smocking is a very unique technique and not at all difficult. But I learned a lot that I would like to share with anyone considering such a project. Continue reading →
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.
“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!”Â
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.
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. The article is featured in Creative Needle magazine.
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?”
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 →
