And back to the cap..

Detail of the brim with lace inserts.

The embroidery isn't very clear in this image (it's not the best camera phone in the world!) but I think the lace is displayed quite nicely. I'm having to add an extra panel in to my version of this cap as my lace is so much narrower than the cotton net in the original. (That, and, obviously, my version is a couple of inches bigger!)

Each insert is hemmed separately before the insertion lace is applied with whipstitch, and then when I have one long strip of completed embroidery I can hem the top and bottom all of a-piece and make the channel for the ribbon. I intend to use narrow silk ribbon for the closures under the chin, and some hand-twisted cord I just happen to have lying around - isn't it splendid to be able to say such things? - to tighten the fit at the back of the neck.

And a close up of the embroidery on the crown. The purple stain, I regret to say, is the work of a blueberry-crazed Small with smudgy mitts. Ah well. It's what toddlers and washing machines are for!

Actually, Small and the Honourable Mr Maclary make my cord. With a drill and a length of embroidery floss.

I love my boys :D

Tyrannosaurs in F-14s!!

(as any "Calvin and Hobbes" fan will know...)
- or in our house, Frogs in Cement Mixers! The first in a series of "unlikely drivers for toy construction vehicles"...

My first try at a pair of 1940s pattern dungarees, in a heavy-duty ash-brown corduroy. He looks like an extra from a Norman Rockwell painting, especially with the bare feet. The shirt, sadly, is not of my making.... but this weekend, there will be making of shirts afoot. Spring is sprung - the grass is riz - I wonder where the birdies is?

And as if by magic...

aka, at the advanced age of 39 (I'm going to be 40 in September! where did the time go?!!) I have fallen in love with cotton voile.

Contemporary cotton lawn, let me tell you, is bobbins. Doubtless will be very useful for shirts, petticoats, and all thinks slightly dazzlingly white, but for the soft, filmy look of the cotton lawn shirts and baby bonnets of the 19th century - forget it. It simply doesn't work.

I'm making a little embroidered bonnet at the moment (I'm not holding out on anything, honest... I just like making tiny baby clothes.. despite not having a tiny baby any more, but a thumping big toddler whose handle of Small is singularly inappropriate...)
http://vintagetextile.com/new_page_529.htm
This little bonnet!

The original is cotton muslin with hand-embroidered net inserts. Well, let me tell you! The trouble I have had tracking down cotton net! So yesterday I bit the bullet and sloped into my local fabric emporium - I try to avoid the place, as I inevitably come out having spent serious money*
*although I resisted the pull of a delicious white embroidered cotton - congratulations, please, to the usual address

- only to come out net-less. Pah. The best I can manage to replicate this, is a fairly open-textured Cluny lace with a central motif. Close, but slightly heavier than the original, so I'm having to fudge the number of panels a bit to make it look as delicate as the original.

It's a funny little bonnet, is this one, being 3 1/2 inches wide by 3 1/2 inches tall. I can't imagine the size of a little 'un who would have worn this. Mine certainly never would, not even as a newborn!! My version is somewhat bigger - 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches - as it's part of an ongoing project. (More on which at a later date as I'm sure I've bored sufficiently for the one day.)