A Slight Change of Plans

A long, long time ago, when the world was new, I promised my daughter I would make her a regency era outfit to be worn for tea at the Davenport House, a local museum preserved in 1820's style. They host teas in March and May each year and my goal was to have us go in proper attire from the skin out.

Well it's May now and I've gotten as far as a mob cap, two muslins for stays, and a bodice for a little dress pinky has since outgrown. Yay for procrastination!

Now I could wait another year for the Davenport House opportunity to come around once again but it just so happens that my daughter has been pestering me to buy her another American Girl doll. And it just so happens that doll is the lovely 1812 historical doll, Caroline Abbot. It also so happens that pinky's birthday is rolling around much sooner than the next Davenport tea cycle and that the American Girl store in Atlanta hosts an afternoon tea of their very own.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Clearly we need to go in full regency regalia, don't you think?

So let's revisit the Davenport idea, shall we? Originally, the idea was to create a look that fit the 1820 aesthetic. However, Caroline story is centered around the War of 1812. During war, supplies would be a bit harder to come by as would be the latest fashions. I would say reasonably, we should adjust our time frame back to 1810, if not a touch earlier. However, I'm not sure I want to go strictly historically accurate for this. I'm quite in love with the look of 1823 specifically and I don't want to change. My justification is that since we aren't visiting a location defined by a time frame, I'm just going to pull a Cartman here and keep things pretty much the same.

For a refresher, here's the painting that inspired pinky's dress. It's the pale yellow one one the left with the purple sash and bonnet.

I recently located the perfect yellow tone on tone fabric at Fabric.com. It's a lovely dotted swiss in a light goldenrod woven with tone on tone stripes and just a wee bit of metallic thread. The rest of the fabric will come from my stash. Lovely soft cotton organza for the fichu and cap, pima cotton for the chemise and petticoat, along with a silk batiste sash, a straw bonnet, and miles of ribbon, lace trim, and other fripperies.

It's a surprise so don't tell her!

And wish me luck! Not because this is difficult. I'm rather confident it can all be managed. But you know I have a procrastination problem.

No, seriously.

French Hand Sewing by Machine

Quite the contradiction in terms, don't you think? Long story short, it's the method of recreating the lovely details we associate with Edwardian fashions into modern clothing, not that you'd know it from the book I'm using for my class.

Holy 80's!

I would be remiss if I didn't address the hot mess on that kid's head. Even in the era that brought us day-glo and acid wash, that business is unacceptable. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, what exactly does one do with French Hand Sewing by Machine?

It's primarily used in children's clothing, particularly frilly, frou frou baby things with delicate embroidery, swaths of lace, and general hard to find in stores sweetness.

Daisy pattern by Susan Stewart Designs

Sweet baby dress from Old Fashioned Baby

Creations by Michie baby dress

Lest you be tempted to dismiss this as a girls only thing, here are some adorably sweet boy versions.

sewn by AuntSchonie
You can make your own with this pattern

Available at Orient Expressed
or create your own with this Primrose Lane Pattern

And of course, the christening gowns.

The Little Blue Bird by Wendy Schoen

If I were Catholic, pudding would have worn
this sweet yet masculine little gown for his christening.
Pattern from Creations by Michie #112

Another name for it is heirloom sewing and let me tell you, the southern ladies looooove their heirloom sewing. What else are you supposed to wear your Big Ass Bows with? And don't look at me like that, mommy. They call them big ass bows, I swear. Just ask my friend E and her adorable little Scarlett.

At her Gone with the Wind themed birthday party

These techniques can also be used in women's clothing, primarily lingerie and blouses but now I've strayed so far from the original point of this post thanks to all the beautiful heirloom sewing images out there that I'm going to have to abruptly yank you back.

I'm taking a class, that's the point, yes. I'm sorry. I get lost sometimes. Anyway, French Hand Sewing by Machine is the name of the book I'm using and I'm putting together a beautiful Easter dress for pinky. White with a blue lining, bits of lace, and a cornflower blue slip. I've taken two classes and have three left. To be honest, I'm not learning much I didn't already know besides the proper pronunciation for words like batiste and entredeux. (bateeeste, all fancy French-like and on-tray-doe a deer, a female deer if you were wondering.) But it's nice to escape the baby, hang out with people who love to sew, and have a definite time frame for finishing a garment considering what a procrastinator I am.

Sneak peek!

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! She's going to look beeeeyyyyooooooooooooootiful! And she better considering how much this bad boy is going to cost at the end of the day.

And if you haven't already, run, don't walk to end my first ever blog giveaway, these purrrtemous dishtowels, handmade by little ol' moi. Okay? Okay.

Introducing the next Roger Ebert

Not to be outdone by her brother, the pinkasaurus has decided that she will be reviewing our Friday Movie Night selections. I wish she'd decided this last week so she could have provided her thoughts on the ultimate in 80's awesomeness, Red Dawn. But alas, you'll all have to hear about this really terrible movie I only pulled from the Redbox because my kids were lulled in by the awful trailer.

::sigh::

The things I do for my children.

Except not really because I didn't watch this. I tried to, figured it might be smart to sit there with them in case an errant boob or buckets of blood crossed the screen but it only took about fifteen minutes into something that desperately wanted to be Cloverfield for the Twilight crowd for me to sacrifice their delicate little psyches for my own.

Turns out, even the kids weren't impressed. Here's pinky's take.

The Darkest Hour is not a good movie. Girls were dum dumb. Do not watch The Darkest Hour. It was not an hour. It was a couple weeks. Well, you could see the aliens at the end and they had these little black masks on. THEY WERE HORRIBLE LOOKING. That was the only good part of the movie. All the girls kind of died except for two because they kept running to stupid places and got shredded into dust.

IT WAS NOT GOOD!

So there you have it. The Darkest Hour was tragic. If you don't trust us, check out Rotten Tomatoes. They gave it a measly 12%. I really need to stop watching Summit movies. They are the ones responsible for foisting Twilight off on poor, naive teenagers. But they did give me Helen Mirren as an kick ass assassin in Red so I suppose I can't fully hate them.

Snug as a bug

Watching Jimmy Neutron as you do.

My poor pudding. He's already a tv casualty.

It's been a long time since I left you

because I was off being a lazy ass.

I'd like to blame being sick but the reality is, I just felt like being a bum.

Let's update, shall we?

Me Made May was a semi success. Aside from the five days or so I laid about in my jammies with a fever, I did wear something handmade each day. However, I didn't take many pictures since I pretty much rocked a rotation of things I've already shown you. I also burned myself out making so many things back to back that I just sort of quit sewing anything about halfway through. I hope to have knocked out a few more things in the next few months so that when Self Stitched September rolls around, I'll have more variety.

Pinky helped participate by wearing her Christmas dress about two Sundays ago. Lucy helped by eating pinky's face.

And here's one of my new favorite skirts. The material is a poly charmeuse from Fabric.com. I think it might even still be available. (And it is here.) It was a ridiculously easy pattern to put together and now I want to find some plaid flannel to make a winter skirt. Can't you see it with a pair of cute slouch boots? Or is that too ridiculously 80's? Would I look like Elyse Keaton I wonder?

As for the Spring-Summer palette Challenge, I really need to step up my game. I've made nothing for it since the button down skirt from a few weeks ago. I'm going to force myself to finish one dress this week before I get so far behind I can't catch up.

Wanna see a better picture of the skirt?

On the homefront, the garden is flourishing so expect an update soon. I harvested some green beans today and fed them to my minions and wonders of wonders, we're all still alive. But that was a mere two hours ago so if I don't post anything in the next few days, be on the look out for a post about food poisoning once we've all come through on the other side.

Also, you all need to pray for me. School is out in one whole week and sweet Lord in heaven, I beseech you on behalf of my hot mess children and my tested patience . . . delivery my children from foolishness. Amen. We have a summer bowling pass and some resources for finding cool things to do in Savannah over the summer so let's just hope I don't end up choking out some small children. I'm too pretty for jail and I doubt they let you bring your sewing machine.

Day two

It's days like this I remember why I have children, yanno, beyond the slave labor aspect. Hey, groceries don't carry themselves into the house, you know.

Anyhow, I have recruited my children as little helpers in my blogging endeavors, primarily to be my personal photographers. Sure, I could get their father to do it but then I have to resist the urge to choke his tall ass out when he gives me that annoying "wut" face for taking five million pictures a day and actually being the type of person who has a blog. What can I say? The man is a seventy year old man in a thirty seven year old body. So I bypass his pursed lipped judgement and finagle the children into doing my dirty work. They do want dinner, yes?

The minute the spill into my house, dropping permission slips here, hoodies there, and leaving notebook paper and pencil nubs in their wake, I pick off a particularly eager looking one and usher them outside for picture taking time. Today, we had to make a pit stop in the land of "what did mommy buy today" to give pinky a dress I found for her at Goodwill. Then, I had to sit and wait while she changed immediately. On one hand, I'm delighted by how much she loves her $1.99 dress. On the other, I WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN, DAMMIT!

I'm glad I waited though because she trilled me. After taking my picture, she decided I should do her a solid and take her picture too and because she's a joiner, she wants it posted on the blog too.

So now that you've suffered that barely entertaining, meandering story, here's the pictures.

What's that I see in the trees?
World peace?

The top was done up in two hours out of some knit I have in my stash. I think I picked it up on the clearance table at Hancock's. But it's been a few years. The skirt is Sandra Lee Me Made, aka, barely made by me at all. But instead of being paid millions of dollars to ice a store bought cake with canned frosting on national television while drunk on peach schnapps and delusion, I took a Goodwill maxi dress, cut off the top, sewed in an elastic waistband and called it good.

Here it is in it's pre-Snarktastical glory.



Who doesn't love a little uniboob in the morning?

 And here's the oft hilarious pinky in her Goodwill dress, perfect as it is.



Whirled peas? I don't get it.


Perfect as she is. Nope, I gave her absolutely no direction on either where we ought to take this picture or how she ought to pose. Pinky just climbed her happy little butt up on that wall and stunted like her mama, facial expression and all.

She slays me.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been ordered to make her a maxi skirt. I'd feel put upon if I wasn't fully aware that in a couple years, she'll be bending over backwards to be my complete opposite. I better enjoy having a mimicking shadow while I can.