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.)

Oh... fiddlesticks.....

The pelisse went to heck in a handcart. Actually, it nearly went in the bin, and so did the matching bonnet - and however would Vesna have recognised me in Bath then??

Still needs the belt, collar and cuffs attaching, and the fasteners putting in. On the plus side, I'm now happy with the way it looks, having ripped out all the back gathers so I don't appear to be smuggling my own chair into the room. And I got some nice big fat hooks and bars from a charity shop in Falmouth, cost of 5p for the card.

We had a lovely weekend not sewing. We went to the cider farm near our home and introduced Will to two Shire horses, Sunny and Shadow. He was a little bit hesitant about touching something so big - especially because Shadow's forelock is so dissimlar in texture to cat fur, e thought that was very odd - but he very quickly got the idea that this big beautiful gentle creature was a friend and not to be afraid of him.

Sadly he is also a great admirer of cows, pigs and sheep, so the thought of being able to persuade Mr Methwell that Will really, really needs a horse is.... unlikely, unless we're going to get pigs, sheep (et al.)
We had a bizarre conversation about our favourite draught horses too. I concluded that actually I'm rather fond of the French draught horses, the Ardennais in particular, for their sheer square leg-at-each-corner rotundity. Percherons tend to have a lovely reassuringly dappled rear elevation, like a child's drawing of a horse, but somehow the Ardennais does it for me.
And Mr M, being an East Anglian boy at heart (you can tell an East Anglian boy, but you can't tell him much...) loves the Suffolk Punch.

On a more dismal note, one of the furry fiends tipped a glass of water over my side of the bed at 5am this morning (Maturin will do anything to get me out of bed to let him out....) The corner of the duvet was drenched. The rain is now pouring down from leaden skies.
Let's hope the bathroom radiator is up to the job....

Stop! This is the Pelisse!

.. almost....

Front now completed. Bodice now 2" bigger due to contrast bands. Not in itself a bad thing...
This does however now mean that the fastenings have to be re-thought.

Original plan was military-style silver buttons and hussar lacings, I thought this would end up looking way too fussy so the next thought was hook and loop fastenings.... but after all that, I'm thinking some nice fat frog fasteners might be the way forwards.
Hoping to get the belt, collar and cuffs done this weekend and then that's my wardrobe for Gloucester done!

Unless I decide to embroider myself a new white muslin dress.... but I wouldn't do anything so silly..... would I??

The Pelisse that Time Forgot

Listen well, o my children, to this cautionary tale...

A good five years ago, my friend's wife gave me a pair of green cotton velvet curtains that they'd bought when they first opened the guest house they run. Beautiful bottle green, slightly faded by the sun in patches, an enormous quantity of velvet.

I decided to make myself a pelisse for autumn and winter wear, something good and heavy, and decided on the blue silk pelisse in Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion". I re-dyed it to cover the sun fading, cut it out, tacked it together... and then Real Life got in the way and I put it in a cupboard and forgot all about it.

Fast forward five years (and this velvet has got to be the best part of 30 years old by now.....) and whilst turning out the cupboards ready for our son to move in to his own bedroom, I find the pelisse.
It's been downhill ever since....

I've lined it with a very heavy bridal satin in a rather tasteful sage green. The problem is, the velvet is unravelling rapidly due to old age and decrepitude (somewhat like me!) so as fast as I'm hemming up the frayed patches, sage green lining pops into view.
*SFX as of tearing hair*

Solution is to use wide black velvet ribbon as an edging band to cover the uneven edges, so far so good, right?
Wrong! The fastening of the original is a covered button band inside the bodice. With the black velvet edging, the only way it "works", visually, is edge-to-edge fastening, and the only way I can think of to do that is with hooks and eyes.

And that's before we start thinking about how I'm going to cover the fraying at the seams wherever the weight of the velvet has pulled it apart.
(Piping cord is your FRIEND.....)

Note to self: next time anyone offers you any reclaimed velvet, look that gift horse in the mouth, girl!

But it WILL be finished, and it WILL look good. That's not a threat ;-) it does look rather splendid at the moment, it's just a matter of catching those loose ends - literally and metaphorically.

Sharing our musings with the wide world....

.. and fairly random musings they are too, I fear, so please be gentle with them!

It's very autumnal here today - yesterday in the park the first leaves were starting to fall from the trees, and a fine sea-mist was coming in as we closed the curtains last night. I don't think it will be very long before we are switching the radiators downstairs back on. It's a sobering thought to reflect on... the year has turned, and before we know it the nights will be drawing in again, the cats asleep upturned in various snug places about the house, the winter quilts brought out of storage....

The sweet peas and roses at the front of the house are coming to the end of their season. After which, though, it will be chrysanthemum season and the look and scent of chrysanthemums is one of the joys of autumn!

I am glad I spent time yesterday doing my mending. It means I can wear my chocolate brown floral swing dress again - it's seen some wear, this dress, from Holly's wedding when it was my new best dress, slowly sliding down the social scale until now it's a slightly fade everyday work-dress but still looks elegant and cool. The same, sadly, cannot be said for Mr Methwell's 10th-century trousers, which although repaired, are highly unlikely to stay same....oh, that man is hard on his trousers! :-)

My little boy is happy. My cats are happy. My husband is happy. I am content.