Fairy Godmother

....well, not quite.  I do, however, have a new goddaughter--my first infant!  (My other godchildren were received into the Church as adults).  As the parents are also very new converts, I offered to make the gown and bonnet, which ended up being a pretty fun project.  I went with Robert Kaufman's cotton voile and ordered a yard, which is close to 60" wide.  I also ordered a lace swag thing to use for the overskirt, figuring it was probably cheaper than sourcing something by the yard and easier to work with.  I have loads left, so I could even make a lacy overskirt for myself or one of the girls at some point.

 Next was a pattern.  I don't have many baby patterns (and no newborn anything) because I didn't start sewing for my girls until they were toddlers, but I did have the Made By Rae Geranium, and wanted something like that.  I was on a tight deadline, however, and wasn't looking forward to grading the thing (the parents asked us less than two weeks before the proposed baptism date, during which time we had to get ready for school, the girls were in two weddings, and Birdie had a birthday.  As it happened, the baptism was pushed off a week, which helped my timeline considerably).  

After looking around a bit, I realized Rae made a free 0-3 month version of the Geranium!  It doesn't have sleeves so I decided to draft some.  I looked at various sleeve drafting methods, and then found a great tutorial here, which worked great. The dress pattern is pretty straightforward, particularly since I've made it in a larger size for my girls, and my only change was to make the skirt longer than drafted so it looked more baptismal gown-like.  I think I went with 18", but can't remember exactly.

The front

The back

The tricky part was figuring how how to sandwich the sleeve in between the outer bodice and the self-lining, but I got there in the end.  I wanted the insides to be as clean as the outsides on this, so I did French seams where I could, and sandwiched what I couldn't into the lining.  

The lace overskirts did give me a bit of a pain, as I struggled to figure out the best way to cut them, and the fabric was extremely slippery.  In the end, I used two layers cut into rectangles according to the pattern, but lengthened considerably. 

Clean insides!

The only 'clean edge' goof I made was to finish the waist seams together with the self-lined bodice, so I ended up laying down a strip of fabric over the edge like bias tape and whip stitching it to the bodice lining by hand.  I had already installed the overskirts and zig-zagged the edges with all the gathering, and I just couldn't see my way to unpicking ALL that just to get the lining edge out.  It looked great and worked well.  

Before I sewed anything on the dress, I put a tiny strip of knit interfacing in the middle of the bodice and embroidered a little Orthodox cross in bone colored DMC floss.  I wanted it to be tone-on-tone, but also to stand out slightly, and that worked perfectly.  

 

I used some vintage white buttons on the back, and added some lace trim from my stash to the neck and sleeves, since the bodice looked very plain against all that lace on the skirt.  I think the lace came from my gram, but I'm not 100% certain about that.  It was the perfect size and scale, and I put it on at the 11th hour, so I was very grateful to have it in my bin o' trims!

After the dress was finished, I set about making a bonnet.  Time was running short, so I knew I wouldn't have time to make booties, so I ordered some cotton crocheted ones that turned out to be much nicer than anything I could have made anyway.  I also wasn't interested in paying for a hat pattern, so a little bit of searching got me to the Purl Soho Baby Sunbonnet, which was the perfect shape.  

My yard of voile was nearly gone by this point, but I made it!  I have one small rectangle of fabric left, maybe 40x18."  Not bad for a $20 dress and cap.  

For the bonnet, I sewed a lace layer together with the outer layer, treating them as one layer, and then added a lace overlay that hangs over the edge, but it actually ended up looking better to have the lace overlay hang off the back, so if I do this again, I'll skip the overlay all together.  Since it is self-lined, the insides are very clean.  

The last thing was to decorate the candle, and I admit, I did leave this a bit late (in my defense, it was the first week of school!) and when I got out my florals to have at it, I realized I could put one of the corsages my mom made for my wedding on the candle and call it good, so that's what I did.  I tied a tiny strip of lace from the dress scraps to give it a little bit of swag.  It looked perfect, and I was glad to have a use for the corsage, which would otherwise just sit in a box until kingdom come.

The service was beautiful, even though I was juggling godmother duties with choir duties.  

Multi-tasking!

Ponchik helped me with the candle, and one of the other kids took over as photographer (another friend took pictures as well; hers are the brightly lit ones).  Birdie's photos are interesting, though.  She's got a good eye, though.  So creative, that one. 

We are so blessed to join this new little family, and to have them be part of ours.  Our kids are thrilled to have a baby around regularly, and there is no shortage of baby minders!  Boo in particular loves the babies and always wants to hold her.  As for me, I love holding a baby and doing the bouncing that the very little ones need (I've been called a baby whisperer a time or two, which I find slightly hilarious, given my own kids' babyhoods), but I'm also happy to hand them back to mama or papa when it is time to go.

Talking Tuesday: Master and His Emissary

 

In his latest substack newsletter, Rod Dreher writes about Iain McGilcrist's work on the brain, and McGilcrist's observation that Western culture has prioritized left brain dominance over balance with the right to great detriment.  (McGilcrist's work is dense, but this short video is a great overview).  Basically, says Gilcrist, the right side of the brain is the master, because it sees big picture, makes lots of different sorts of connections, and is creative but can be prone to madness.  

The left brain must be the emissary of the right so that both sides work together for an experience of reality which deals with the tangible and rational, but also lives in spiritual reality, the amorphous realm of mystery that we can only glimpse in slivers from time to time, because a view of the whole would be too much for us.  Our mystics and seers are ones who get to see more of that realm and live in it more fully than we.  They give us a window on it.  

Left brain dominance cannot see the forest for the trees; it is a kind of tunnel vision that not only thinks itself the master, but no longer perceives the presence of the right brain and is insistent that such a thing cannot exist.  To put it another way, it's like a tree in the middle of the forest sees only itself, and is blind to the fact that it is part of a forest, a larger ecosystem of reality. 

Writes Dreher:

"Reading McGilchrist [IM], it seems to me that the experience of consciousness is like what quantum physics tells us about reality: that it is both wave and particle. We live within a wave field that only becomes particle-ized through observation. When the left brain wishes to fix on something to understand it, it isolates the thing, but what it sees is only a partial picture of reality, because it denies the wave context (and has to, in order to see the particle). Yet a purely right-brain perception of reality cannot perceive the reality of the particle in isolation, so it too provides only a partial picture of reality. The truth is, living in time, we can never fully apprehend reality. But we can know it through participating in it.

IM quotes Herbert McCabe: “When we speak of God, we do not clear up a puzzle; we draw attention to a mystery.”"  ~Rod Dreher, "Detaching the Limpet," Daily Dreher Substack newsletter, September 18, 2021.

I've been thinking about these sorts of things all year.  What does it mean to live in the balance of the left and right brains?  How do we participate in the mystery of reality that is not tangible?  How do we orient our telos such that it reflects these things, and what does that mean for day to day living?  

I have no pat answers, but I suppose the questions are perhaps an orientation toward understanding.  It's maddening sometimes, like I have a shine of something important in the corner of my eye that I can't quite make out, but when I try to look directly at it, it disappears.  But maybe that is the point--one cannot approach these things head on, but can only sidle up to them from an angle, hoping for a sliver of insight.

School Colors

I mentioned that I made a kelly green knit dress on the same pattern as the teal one in August, I think.  I saved it for the first day of school since it was exactly the green of our school color.  I had to do a meet and greet with new families, so it was good to have something highly visible on!  

 This dress was much more successful than the teal dress, I'm happy to report.  It also is a bit more saturated than it photographed, mores the pity, as it really is a gorgeous shade of green.

The teal dress is out of the telio cotton knit that is slightly heavier than the KnitFabric.com mystery cotton knit, and so the whole thing drags a little from my shoulders, and the ties are too heavy.  I need to fix it now that I made the green dress ties differently.

Not much to report on construction; I used the fit tweaks I made on the failed yellow dress to make the bodice and skirt slightly roomier, cut 3" ties at twice length (they are twice as long as the skirt), and rounded the neckline slightly, but not much else.  It's a good dress and I'm glad to have it in my closet. 

#sewnshownseated

 

 

 

We've been assigned to a more ethnically Russian parish in the past year and a half, and I was recently reminded that Russians dress up more than Americans, particularly for church.  I had forgotten, being away from Russia for so many years.  I'm never a schlub, but I clearly need to up my church dress game, especially as a clergy wife.  And stop wearing Birkenstocks to church.  

#sewnshownseated

Which left me with a connudrum.  I have fine shoes for cold weather, but usually wear comfortable sandals in summer because we stand for almost 2 hours on Sunday morning (plus another 40 minutes or so Saturday nights), and my feet are terrible.  I can't wear even a low heel on a regular basis in that setting because of my neuroma, so I've been casting around for solutions.

I bought these shoes, which I never thought I'd like, but I actually do, and while I wouldn't want to do any serious city walking in them, they will do for summer church services.  They have a big toe box, unusual for this style, and the ankle strap is light and flexible. 

They are extremely flat with no arch support, and I did need a little bit of moleskin along the back edge but I have bone spurs on my heels and arches for days, so that's no surprise.  Forgive the swollen legs and feet; the humidity is still pretty intense. #pittingedemaisnofun

It seems like I have a lot of balls in the air just now, so I'd better get back to juggling!

Stick a Fork in It: Alter It August

I've hit the wall with the heat, the summer, the news, everything, so I'll just say I've been sewing, altering things I made before to make them work for another season or two.  I have some things on my mind, but not enough bandwidth to write about any of it coherently (or with any kind of peace).

 

I decided to try to reinvigorate these two corduroy skirts after repeated washings meant they became a little shorter than I prefer.  The left skirt already underwent some major alterations in the late spring, but I've not really test-driven it yet.  I took off the waistband and did a Petersham facing instead, plus let out some of the back center seam that I had taken in quite severely in the spring of 2020.  If I like the waistband fix, I'll take off the waistbands of the rust and blue skirts too.

I've let down the 2" hems, but in corduroy especially it leaves an unsightly line, so I'm covering it with some folksy trim I had in the stash. 

I cut down the yellow dress I made in July for Birdie.  I was all set to cut it down for underwear, when Birdie wandered into the kitchen, saw my fabric pile, and asked with a twinkle in her eye: "What's that? Can you cut it down for me?"  I'm such a sucker.  I added the trim just because.

 

Birthday linen fabric with the last little remnant of a favorite piece of vintage fabric.  I'm not super into all-over florals any more, so a little accent will be nice.  I intend to toile a Terrace dress with it.

Gorgeous linen for future projects to make with or for other people.  I'm teaching a few people to sew or mend this month.  The fabric unintentionally coordinates together very well!

I cut down the Emerald I made in the spring; I just didn't enjoy wearing it at.all.  I had always envisioned a kind of slip dress for the fabric anyway (when fabric tells you what it wants to be, it is usually better to heed it...), so I altered the top for a pajama using one I like for summer as a guide on the top.  The scoop on the one side is slightly deeper than I intended; I might put a slice of the fabric back in on that side, but it is a lovely cool nightgown.

A few projects made for others (will blog about those when the recipients have them!) and a lot of textile dreaming.  And longing for cold weather.

Frankenpatterning again...

I've had a hard time finding a warm weather dress pattern I like; the Emerald I made in the spring is just okay, and I'm not sure I want to keep fiddling with a pattern that isn't well suited to my proportions.  After my toile of the Tea House dress, I had the idea of using the elements of it that I liked (the wrap around sash, cut on sleeves and midi length) and adapting it for a knit. I have a RTW midi dress that I like the look and fit of very much but not the fiber content, and wanted to replicate the look in a better fiber substrate.  So this dress is the result of those two things coming together, with a lot of stops in between to tweak the details.  It does seem like a winner.  My husband likes it very much, so that's all the better! 

(A note about the pictures: the ones in the garden were taken before I opened up the neckline, the ones inside taken after.  The fit difference is subtle, but I thought it would be nice to show both sets).

I started with the Emerald top for the bodice, and put the McCall's 7353 skirt on it, since I like the way the pockets are installed.  I used the sash pattern from the Tea House dress.  I narrowed the skirt to match the width of my original alteration to the Emerald top, taking out about 1/2".  I also added 1" to the top and bottom of the skirt, and 3/4" to the top to give myself a large seam allowance at the waist. The fabric is the Telio Perla that I used for my burgundy skirt.  I still can't get over how much the hand of that fabric changes with washing.

 I had originally thought to install elastic at the waist and use the belt for show only, but the waist line was too high, and the whole thing ended up looking quite strange, and not at all the silhouette I wanted. So I pulled out the elastic, unpicked the bodice from the skirt and cut the extra 1" off the top of the skirt. 

 

 

 

The next problem was with the pockets, which gaped badly and pulled the skirt weirdly across the hips, so I cut them off and seamed the edges which fixed the pulling across the hips.  It is probably because I took out the 1/2"; I can't decide whether the pockets are worth it in this dress, to be honest.

I also recut the neckline wider, as my original neckline looked slightly odd, and it was pulling at the sides.  Releasing some of that and rebinding the neck made the whole thing behave better and pushed the sleeve caps a little further down on my biceps, which also looks better.

I used the Emerald facings for the sleeve openings, but used a simple binding for the neckline rather than the facing (although I wish I had done a proper facing on it).  I also faced the hem, mostly because I like the look of it better, and I think it lies flatter than a regular knit hem.  It wouldn't be hard to adapt the sleeves to 3/4 or long sleeves, but I'm short on warm weather dresses at the moment.

This dress was a great traveling garment, and I wore it on the plane to and from California.  The slightly longer length kept my legs covered on the cold plane, but it was still comfortable for sitting in a narrow seat for many hours.

After seeing Whitney's Woolfork yellow linen dress, I got sort of obsessed about having a yellow summer dress too.  I have SAD in the summer time instead of winter, and I'll take whatever dose of cheery I can get!

The daffodil linen Whitney used was a little dear for my budget (although it is a perfect yellow!), and the Woolfork is fabric hungry (almost 5 yards!), so I decided to try for a yellow knit, with a few tweaks to the Emerald-M7353 mashup.  

 

 I ordered the fabric from the same place as my yellow, green, and teal skirts, but I decided to try the light yellow instead of the medium, thinking it might work better with my skin tone for a solid yellow dress.  In retrospect, I should have gone with the same medium yellow as my skirt, as the light yellow is just this side of neon instead of buttercup.  (It is hard to tell in these photos, but trust me when I say it is VERY bright yellow). Yellow is so tricky!  I love it, but I have to have a very particular shade of yellow if I want to wear it next to my face and not look ill. This shade was not it and I'm mad at myself about it.  Moving on...

My tweaks to this version were to add the width back to the skirt that I took out, and to widen the Emerald top portion to match (which in turn widened the neckline a bit more).  I did all the facings this time and the fit is better on this one, with just a tad more ease throughout.  I could have managed pockets but I was rushing to finish it before our California trip, so I didn't bother.  It's just as well, as I'll be cutting this dress down for undergarments.  

The fit is good, however, and I've got a green dress cut out with the fitting changes using the same green knit as my skirt.  My kids' school color is kelly green, so I'm excited to wear the green one for school events!  (Pics to come when I've finished the thing)

Cultural Visual Ideals

Over the years, I've nattered on quite a lot about body image in this space, and I think it is worth revisiting every now and again.  Three years ago, My Body Model launched their app, which is produces custom croquis (pronounced kroh-key) according to the measurements inputted into the algorithym.  There are some tweaks you can make for individual body quirks like bust height and the bulge below the hips at the top of the thighs and some other proportional things. 

The advantage of a croquis that looks like me is that I can draw out garments before making them to see what they look like on my body.  My proportions are far from industry standard--industry standard being a woman 9 heads high and slim enough to not need things like internal organs.  Just what we consider the cultural visual ideal here in late post-modern capitalism.  The average woman is 7 heads high and there is no "standard" for the other measurements.  But I digress.  As usual.

 

Earlier this summer, I started sketching garments I already owned or had made in previous seasons, as an idle exercise.  It turned out to be quite useful as it helped me see what I already had, what I was actually wearing/wanted to wear, etc.  I even used it as a packing tool to put together a cohesive suitcase.

Suitcase options...

At some point, Birdie noticed these sketches, and I gave her a page to draw on once when we were waiting somewhere.  She has been drawing and coloring since then, happily making up garments and coloring them as it suits her.  Ponchik has gotten in on the action as well, and, surprisingly, so has Boo.  Boo is designing superhero uniforms (natch).

By Birdie

 

By Ponchik

After a few days of much concentrated coloring and designing (it was a great way for the girls to pass time on the long plane ride to California), I realized the value of giving them croquis of me.  Or more precisely, of my body shape, which is definitely not shaped like Black Widow or a fashion model.  It normalizes my shape for them, I think.  I thought about making croquis of them, so they would be designing on their own bodies, but the app is a little pricey for such an endeavor, so I think I'll stick with the files I already have.

By Boo

I suppose it is just a drop of sand in the ocean of cultural imaging, but put enough sand together and you just might have an island.