Last year, I was scolded by Helen because their Easter Dresses didn’t have Easter eggs on them.
I decided I would not make that mistake again this year, and have the outrage of a little girl AGAIN.
So I made them each TWO dresses. One has Easter Eggs on it (and they wore that to an Easter Egg Hunt yesterday). With such tall girls, they’re really just tunics; I’ll have to make shorts or capris to go with them so they’re not obscene. They turned out really cute, and I especially like the rick-rack (shut up, Sue. No one wants to hear your opinion about rick-rack. You, too, Jerry. Zip it.). I think it just adds to the whole Easter Egg feel.
The actual dresses for Easter were a little more involved… Helen helped me design them and pick out the colors, and I went from there. She wanted to LOOK like an Easter egg. Her vision was to have pretty much a sheath dress with zig-zags and strips of pastel colors, but I know how little girls like to spin and I knew she’d be sorry if this dress didn’t spin. So I modified her design and gave them full skirts. These are actually the same pattern as last year’s dress, but with Seminole piecework in the bodice and skirt. Mom made lots of things with this technique when I was about Helen’s age, and I’ve always loved it. My wedding dress had this technique as well. It’s deceptively simple, and very fun to do.
They looked fantastic this morning, and loved wearing their dresses. I am going to make a lining for the pieced part of the skirts, just to protect the raw edges a bit. I was pulling threads off of Alice’s hemline all day today — she’s just so rough on her clothing. The bodice is fully lined, so all of those seams are already protected. But I’d really hate it if the skirt piecing got messed up because I didn’t take the extra time to line it. Hopefully I can get to that in the next week.
The most annoying thing (and I’m not really annoyed by it — it’s just funny, really)? People at church kept asking me if Mom had made these dresses. I wanted to jump up and down and say, “NO! I CAN SEW, TOO!” But I was much more polite. “Actually, Helen helped me design them and I made them.”
I was quite proud of my girls today, but I don’t know how I’m going to improve on this next year.