Not Your Basic Little Black Dress

Oh, I really like this dress!  Not for myself, mind you.  I just don't get dressed up happily.  But I love the styling and unique details.

This is another piece that I repaired for Basya Berkman Vintage Fashions.  The repairs were unremarkable, just closing a few open seams.  But look at how fun the dress is!

From the front, just basic sheath styling.  But what's that in the back?

July 21st Birthday Quilt

A little girl was born on July 21, 2008.  This is important to me, because July 21st is also my birthday, and because this new baby is the great-granddaugher of my husband's uncle and aunt.  This is the time when it would be great to have easy names for relatives, but we don't.  She is our first cousin, twice removed.  I think.

I love putting tons of symbolism into commemorative quilts.  (See these posts also:  wedding quilt, remembrance quilt, remembrance quilt.)  Here's the story of this one.

Zig-Zag Sewing Machines

I recently posted about a blouse I repaired, dating to the 1920s or 30s.

I became curious about the dating of the blouse relative to the seam finishing techniques.  They are French seams, finished with a machine zig-zag stitch.  

outside

inside

Vintage Net Blouse

This vintage blouse is made from a netting embellished with eyelets and a lovely lace edging.  It is in remarkably good shape for its age, likely in the 1920s or 30s.  So delicate and so feminine.

Woven Memories

This little quilt has connections to several other things I've blogged about:

Dye Migration

This ocean waves quilt is in my own collection.  It's one of the first quilts I purchased when I was starting to learn about antique quilts, in the early 1980s.  I bought it because I like the soft color combination, and especially liked that the quilt-maker had built on the reds in some of the prints, and accented those soft colors with a cheerful red binding.

A short while ago, I took it out of storage to bring it to a show-and-tell lecture I was about to present.  All my quilts are kept in acid-free storage boxes, and padded with acid-free tissue paper.  Lo and behold, I discovered that the tissue lining the box was covered with pale red triangles.

Van Gogh

I found this vintage smock at an estate sale.  I bought a bunch of craft supplies and doo-dads at this sale, all the while wishing I had somehow known the woman whose house I was in.  I think she and I would have been good friends.