Mending a 1950s Party Dress

A lovely 1950s vintage, pink lace party dress....

 

....with a huge rip in the pleated net skirt panel.  It's this pleated panel that gives the dress its special styling.  (I stuck a piece of blue fabric underneath so the net shows better in the photos.)  One side of the net was torn more or less horizontally and about 18" up from the hem.

One of Those Amazing Coincidences

So, the other day, my husband and I were at the bank to sign some papers on a financial thingy.  We were ushered into a conference room and ---

The very first thing I saw was the chairs.  The chairs!  I whipped out my camera and took a couple of pictures.

For the last few years, I've been working on a series of quilts called "Something From Nothing", my own personal challenge project using decorator fabric samples. 

And........  The chairs are upholstered in one of the fabrics I used in one of the quilts!  Such fun!

 

The quilt is called "Something From Nothing -- Off Center".  It's 27" x 35".

In keeping with the challenge I set myself for this series, I used all the colorways of this pattern that I had, and I designed the quilt to relate to the pattern.  The appliqued rings and dots are all made with other circle prints, all from the stash of decorator samples.  The dots and the buttons I added are the same size as the design elements in the print.

Those chairs made my day, for sure!

For more on this series of quilts check out these previous posts:
--  the story of how the series came about
-- photos of some recently completed quilts
-- descriptions of the design process and step-by-step photos for two of the larger and more complex quilts - Something From Nothing -- Cleopatra's Fan and Something From Nothing -- What the Birds See

History Comes to Life on a Quilt - Part 4

Part 4.  A Window on Life in 1897

(Part 1 tells the background of a quilt inscribed with many names, and how I started my search for the details of its history.  Part 2 details some of the interesting family stories.  Part 3 tells a long story about three intertwined families.)

In general, I'm noticing that many households included more than our typical nuclear families.  It becomes clear pretty quickly that most families took in extended family members when the need arose, single or widowed aunts and uncles and parents, for example.  Many households took in boarders, and many hired servants, often recently arrived from Ireland, especially during the early childbearing years.  Hardly anyone lived alone.

History Comes to Life on a Quilt - Part 3

Part 3.  Three Intertwined Families

 

(Part 1 tells the background of a quilt inscribed with many names, and how I started my search for the details of its history.  Part 2 details some of the interesting family stories.)

Here's the most complex and hard to research story I've found so far.  Eunice B. Phinney nee Dyer had married Erastus Phinney in 1876 in Boston.  At that time, Erastus was 66.  This was his second marriage.  Eunice was 42, her first marriage.  By the time the quilt was made, Eunice was a widow and living in Melrose with Mary Ives Hersey, a spinster.

I started noticing the same family names in their ancestry.  It took a bunch of head scratching and searching, but I figured out that the two women were related.   Mary's mother, Mary Knowles Dyer Hersey, and Eunice were sisters - so Eunice was Mary Ives Hersey's aunt.  Then I found, on the 1900 census, that Nehemiah Mayo Dyer was also living in their house.  I looked at some older records, and found that Nehemiah was Eunice's brother and Mary's uncle.  He was a Civil War veteran and captain of the US Navy, who moved in with his family members after his retirement.

History Comes to Life on a Quilt - Part 2

Part 2.  Stories, Stories, and More Stories

(Part 1 tells the background of a quilt inscribed with many names, and how I started my search for the details of its history.) 

Families with several children have been most useful for narrowing down the dates.  The Dorchesters, Chester O. and Edith G. nee Kimball, for example.  Their daughter Alice Jean was born in 1896, and her name is on the quilt.  Their son Kenneth was born in 1899 and is not on the quilt.  Similarly, Eva and Harry Thompson's daughter Virginia, born in 1891, is on the quilt, as is their son Kenneth, born in March 1897.

Between the Pickles (their story is in Part 1), the Dorchesters, and the Thompsons, I had pretty quickly placed the date between later in 1897 and sometime in 1898.  I will toot my own horn and say that my first guesstimate on the age of this quilt was late 1800s or early 1900s, or perhaps an older top that was finished some years later.  This was based on the old-fashioned, 19th-century-style penmanship being combined with the polka dot backing and ties rather than fancy quilting, which point to something a bit more recent.


Also, I found that the great majority of the names appear on census pages for a town called either Melrose City or Melrose.  So now, I am sure the quilt was made in Massachusetts, and can add that to the search criteria.

History Comes to Life on a Quilt - Part 1

This quilt was sent to me, in need of repair.  It's a special quilt, because all the white pieces are inscribed in ink with names.  I am thinking that it may very well have been a fund-raising quilt, since the names are all written by the same hand.  But there is no dedication or date, so there really is no way to know for sure.

The quilt has some tears at the edges, both on the front and on the polka dot back.  Most happily, none of the names are affected.

Favorite Quotes #9 - Chatter, Chatter, Chatter

Aren't these little crafty women just so sweet?  Heads bent over their needlework, a nice cuppa tea on the way.

They are an illustration for the poem "Shoes and Stockings" (in the book When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne, artwork by E. H. Shepard.)  The original artwork is pen and ink; the color was added by my mom.

My mom always loved a good, freshly sharpened pencil.  One of my coziest memories is cuddling next to her on a lazy morning.  She'd read a poem, and then I'd watch her color, bringing the illustrations to life, just for me.  Looking back now, I see one more indication that I was meant from early on to be an artist.