Monday, April 21, 2003 AD Easter Dresses [WARNING: Totally girly post ahead!]
Blogging about spiritual issues at Eastertide? Oh, that's been done to death. Let's talk about clothes, now. ;-)
When I was a little girl, I would get a new dress every year for Easter, usually made by my mom. My two favorites were a pink gingham number with multicolored butterflies (this was like camoflague for my bedroom, which was also done in pink gingham), circa 1976, and a lavender gingham/calico patchworky sort of thing, circa 1979. I used to be able to list every dress, but some have now been lost to my patchworky sort of memory.
This year we revived the tradition. I had picked up some floral print fabric (technically calico, I guess, but much bigger and bolder than the typical small floral print) two summers ago and mom delivered a skirt when she arrived for a visit Thursday evening. Mom also threw together two blouses -- one pink and one lavender (do we see a recurring theme, here?) -- to coordinate. She had embroidered around the neckline of both blouses, and around the cuffs of the pink one, which has long sleeves.
She asked me if I wanted them further embellished, and I took over from there. The lavender blouse was the first target, since I wanted to wear it Easter day. Mom had done a row of feather stitching in a dark blue and some pink knotted rosebuds. I added some white buds and green leaves. The pink blouse had darker pink feather stitching to which I added a second row in white. Unfortunately, we'd had to cut the sleeves shorter, so we lost Mom's pink row on the cuffs. But that gave me a chance to learn to learn to feather stitch from scratch, rather than just following over her stitching. First I learned the wrong way on the right sleeve (because I was figuring it out for myself), then I did much better on the left sleeve after a tip from Mom.
Of course the most important thing is that it's been wonderful to sit with her the last few days and just be domestic -- her knitting or sewing, me embroidering; chatting, watching a movie or listening to music. We went to the fabric store on Friday and played. She sometimes cringes at my taste in fabrics -- I like much bigger, brighter, bolder prints than she does -- but when I was trying to decide between two options for a dress, she urged me to go with the bolder pattern, because she knew it would suit me better and I would enjoy it more.
Sigh...I wish I could have had all week to just sew and play with her, but alas I am back in cubicleworld for the rest of the week.
And since I suppose I should say something about the real meaning of Easter...
Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!
Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids Him rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise,
ALLELUIA!
Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 4/21/2003 04:00:00 PM
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