Sewing – Valerie's Voice

Five Dresses

As we continue our preparations to move, I brought to light a couple of old dresses I had tucked into the back of our closet. It was fun to think back on their stories.

In junior high I learned to sew and continued sewing a lot of my clothes through high school (and a few years beyond)…including prom dresses. I liked a lot of the clothes I made…I guess that’s the beauty of making your own clothes…picking out the right fabric, adding details to make them your own, and they fit well. Of all the clothes I made, there are only two dresses, from the 1960’s and 70’s, that I kept.

This red/white dress I made in high school…the hem length was short, as was the style back then!

I loved adding detail to my dresses. The flared-cuff and the lace trim around the neckline, wrists and small waist, made this dress unique. It used to fit!

The cranberry color dress has interesting details; front pleats, a peter pan collar with a knot, and a belt I made.

I did not make the black and blue party dress, but I fell in love with it when I first saw it. I wish it still fit! I felt really good in it and it was a pleasure to wear. I remember finding it at an extremely low price on a clearance sale. There was a time when Gary worked for a company that threw elaborate Christmas parties (in the 80’s) and they were dress-up events. It does have shoulder pads which definitely dates it, but I couldn’t part with it, so it hangs in my closet.

The cream color peasant dress was another dressy-dress I wore for special occasions, including wedding soirées. I’ll wash it up and give it to a thrift store. I can imagine a young woman wearing it today…maybe I’m wrong…

My delicate baptism gown – I have pictures of me in this dress at my baptism, but obviously I do not remember wearing it…but it does have special meaning and I’ll keep it.

As I thought about my sewing days, I envisioned the basement in the house where I grew up. I realized between practicing on the upright piano and sewing with a Singer sewing machine, I spent a lot of time down in that finished-off basement. I enjoyed it. I pondered whether to bring my sewing machine (bought in 1978) with me to our new house, and decided I will take it with me – just in case I get inspired to sew something!

A Treasure Chest

Every few years we open up our cedar chest. It holds many treasures.

We use the beautiful cedar chest my father gave to my mother (when they got married in 1947) as a TV stand. The price tag is still inside…$54.95. Also, inside is a moth insurance policy!

The cedar chest works well as a TV stand, but with the TV on top it is not conducive to getting inside. We need to move the TV and other paraphernalia in order to open it up.

A look inside the cedar chest. It still smells good.

The last time we looked inside was in 2016 and I blogged about it then. Recently we opened up this treasure chest and here a some of the treasures:

This is a baby quilt made for me by my aunts and cousins, when I was pregnant for the first time. it is precious and I put it back into the cedar chest.

This is my Brownie uniform. I gave it to a thrift store.

This is my candy striper uniform, complete with a cap! I was a candy striper at the University of MN hospital. I gave it to a thrift shop.

This baptism gown was used by me and my brother. My mother and her sister’s was also in the cedar chest but in very bad condition. I had to throw it away. I’ll keep this gown until the next time.

This “shawl” my mother knitted. It does have arms and an angora collar. I liked it. I saved it for the grandchildren to play dress-up.

These bags I made for my boys, and then stenciled them. They used them to carry their “stuff” around.

A pillow cover I made from a Norwegian stitchery kit. I sent it on to the thrift store.

This is one of my favorite dresses I sewed in high school. I put it back in the cedar chest.

This is another dress I sewed after high school. It was hard to get the whole dress in the picture. I kept the dress.

There were other items not pictured…an old Christmas stocking, a purse, some glass cat figurines I remember buying as a souvenir on one of my family road trips. It was fun going through these treasures that took me down memory lane.

I do have a story about an afghan I pulled from the cedar chest that I will share soon.

Trolls

Trolls made a comeback
The vintage trolls went away
but returned transformed.

Before we left on our road trip to Colorado I was going through a closet and found a bag of old trolls. They were the ones from the 1960’s that I used to play with when I was a little girl. I decided I would bring them to Colorado to see if my grandchildren would be interested in playing with them… Zoey was.

The vintage trolls were a big hit. Inside the bag were three “regular-sized” troll dolls, approximately 3” tall with wild hair (well, one troll had thinning hair!), two baby troll dolls, and a lot of trolls-size clothes.

Troll with thinning hair, and a baby troll doll.

I sat down with Zoey to look through the clothes and surprised myself with all the clothes I had made for my trolls, mostly from felt material. I do remember my neighborhood friend, Diane, and I playing with our troll dolls for hours on end when we were growing up, but I did not remember making all the clothes until I saw them again.

Some of the clothes I made for my trolls in the 60’s.

Most of the clothes were cuts in the felt fabric but there were also a couple of outfits that I had stitched together and/or trimmed with sequins and such.

It was very fun for me to look at these pieces of clothing I made for my trolls. I remember the fun we had dressing them up and then changing their outfits. I left my trolls behind in Colorado knowing Zoey was enjoying the trolls too…dressing them up and then changing the outfits.

I know trolls have made a comeback and look a bit different these days. I wonder what The Troll movie is about? I may watch it now that I’ve been reintroduced to my trolls. According to Wikipedia, “The dolls were first created in 1959 and became one of the United States’ biggest toy fads in the early 1960s.”

Face Masks

It appears face masks will be part of the new normal as the Covid-19 pandemic has changed our lives forever. Face masks are already required in some stores and requested in many others. It is a safety measure to protect all of us from spreading the virus. We are all in this together.

I eked out two masks on my old sewing machine, which has seen better days.

Masks that tie around the head…they have nose wire and a pocket for a filter.

At the time elastic was hard to come by so I used old t-shirts for the ties, which was suggested and was a good alternative. The masks turned out OK and have served us well.

There are many folks in our town making masks. There is a person in charge of the operation. She sends emails with updates and has created a station at a convenient location downtown Northfield for mask making supplies. She raised funds, ordered supplies including blue filter fabric, elastic (which is available again) and other items. Most, if not all of the fabric, has been donated. Mask-makers go to the station to pick up what they need.

Cutting fabric into 7×9 inch and 5×7 inch pieces.

Since I feel I cannot sew nice masks with my machine I decided to help by cutting fabric. The 100% cotton fabric needs to be washed, ironed and cut into different shapes (depending on style of mask and whether it is for an adult or child.)

Beautiful masks my friend makes with elastic…they have a filter already sewn into mask, and a nose wire.

I was talking with a friend the other day and we were lamenting about wearing masks because you cannot tell the expression on other’s faces when they have their masks on. When you cannot see smiles you miss a lot…so we thought it would be great to have masks with see-through space so you could see more of a person’s expression.

The very next morning on the news I read about see-through masks…made especially for those who need to lip-read.

Hmmm…Our good idea – already conceived, and created – by another. I think of the saying…”Necessity is the mother of invention.”

I saw this masked bunny in a window display shortly after Easter…

I have no doubt face masks will become a fashion statement. Soon.

Button Puzzle

As I was sitting in the sunshine the other day, sewing buttons on my son’s favorite shirt, I realized I get a lot of satisfaction repairing something that is worth repairing.

And I like puzzles.

This favorite shirt of his has been around awhile… so I started sewing buttons on this shirt before he was married. And since I have a jar of buttons, he still asks me if I can repair it.

This is the third time repairing it, and it reminded me of a book we would read over and over again to our boys when they were little called Hiram’s Red Shirt. It’s a story about a man who kept trying to patch his favorite red shirt until finally he had to buy a new one. I browsed through our bookshelves and found it, so now I can read it to the grandkids.

My story would read like this…there once was a favorite shirt with a button missing. I looked in my button jar and found a button similar to the buttons on the shirt so I sewed it on, and the shirt was ready to wear again.

My button jar…not the traditional mason jar.

A year or two later another button, or two, went missing. I will mention here – these buttons are not the ordinary dress shirt buttons and it’s amazing how many types of buttons there are in this world.

So, this time I used a button off the cuffs to replace the missing button from the buttoned placket in the front of the shirt. I used a different set of matching buttons for the cuffs…although not the same buttons, they looked similar to the original buttons, and since you don’t see the cuffs next to the placket it looked fine.

Another year or two goes by, and more buttons are broken or have gone missing. The shirt is still a favorite, is still in great shape, and is still worth repairing.

So, back to my button jar. (This is fun for me.) Two buttons are missing; one from the pocket and one from the placket. I take the button from the second pocket, sew it on the placket and then hunt for two similar buttons from my button jar to sew on the pockets. I succeed in finding two that look alike – and look similar to the original – and sew all three buttons on the shirt. It’s ready for the next go around.

Here’s hoping the repair will last another year or two. I think it may require a whole new set of buttons next time, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my button puzzle.