The Pleasant Times

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Directions for the Shawl Collar (take two!)

Scratch that last post.... my mother (who made the collar) pointed out to me that I had stretched it too much and that the straight neck edge is actually slightly curved at the ends. So here is the better photo:

You seamstresses are so smart anyway, you probably can work a pattern off the photo!

The ruffle was cut on the bias, 2 inches wide, and 2-3 times as long as the edge to which it is sewn. The ruffle was narrowly hemmed on one side, gathered on the other, and sewn to the edge with 1/4 seam allowance, then a zig-zag stitch over the raw edges to finish. Then the neck edge was narrowly hemmed, including the ends of the ruffle.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

The Rosebud Dress

At last, some finished projects!

Here is a new gown made from the Sense & Sensibility Regency Dress Pattern. The fabric is a burgundy rosebud and half-blown rose on a light pink background. Narrow burgundy ribbon trims the bodice, sleeves, and hem.

Back view. The skirt is gathered all the way across the back, rather than just the center back.

The dress seemed rather plain, and though I intend to make a little vest to go with it, who knows when that will ever come to pass. So I borrowed my mother's shawl collar to wear over the neckline. This is my favorite accessory:) One of these days I will have to make my own!

The back of the collar is a long "V." It makes a dress seem so romantic! The collar is made of lightweight cotton (like a voile) and has a bias ruffle around it.

Here is a matching toddler jumper made out of the rosebud scraps and some toile scraps.

The buttons are little sparkly pink roses.

Even baby doll got a little gown, out of scraps!

Monday, December 1, 2008

My Mother is Betty Crocker

Buy at AllPosters.com

Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food by Susan Marks

...or could have been! I just picked up this book at the Dollar store yesterday. I was surprised at Betty Crocker's secret life... though my favorite cookbook is the 1958 Betty Crocker one my Grandma gave me, Betty Crocker is in my mind regulated to a red spoon on a cake mix box (and I do not like cake mixes, as I was raised on a home-made dinette cake, which recipe I just now remembered came from a Betty Crocker cookbook!) There are recipes and boxed foods with Betty Crocker's name on them, but "she" is no more to me than that. But in the old days, she was so real to Americans that they thought she was real. She was the second-best-known woman in America behind Eleanor Roosevelt. She received nearly 5,000 letters a day. I never knew she was a radio personality. And what she said on the radio surprised me even more.

I could just imagine a time when homemakers prepared dinner in the kitchen, or folded their laundry, and listened to Betty Crocker (aka Marjorie Childs Husted and many actresses across the country who read Husted's scripts) dispense not only cooking advice and flour advertisements, but housekeeping advice, husband-keeping advice, and shared listener's letters from across America. As encouraging as it was to 1920's gals who could not cook to have an on-air cooking school, it would have been more encouraging to hear the motherly woman's voice cheering folk on during the depression, a world war, and lastly as a homemaker's champion in the early 1950's.

The eerie thing was that the Betty Crocker of back then, so much more than a red spoon on a cake mix box, sounded just like my mother. I know it could not have been her, as she came on the scene too young to participate by the time Betty Crocker's radio career had ended. I told Mom that she could be the new Betty Crocker-- filling that empty part of the housekeeper's day that we did not know we were missing!

Happiness and the Domestic Scene