Summer Sky Roses

                              

This rose painting by French artist Pierre Redoute is one of the ones I like best because of the pale blue background. Light pink roses are so pretty against a blue sky.

    

This is why this cotton fabric (from Walmart a few years ago) is so appealing to me.  I have saved pieces of it for this project, and some blogger friends and email friends have helped me out by sending me some of their leftover pieces.  I have used buttons that will blend in with the fabric, rather than novelty buttons. 

                          The name of this line of clothing is "Summer Sky Roses"

     

                                      The name of this dress is "Summer Sky Roses."

This is just the kind of dress a lady would like wearing at home  on a day with or without blue skies.  Although it is designed for a house dress, having the waistline and bodice a little looser than a fitted dress, it is dressy enough to wear other places.  I have not made the coordinating aprons yet. For a more formal look, I am making light pink cotton short jackets, which I hope to finish soon.  

My idea for homemaker clothing is to have a dress you can wear all day, donning an apron over it at home and removing the apron in favor of a bolero or jacket when going out.

 I made a few small things with this fabric for a post on beginner sewing a few years ago.

                            

Once again I have to assure you that these garments look a hundred times better on the ladies who wear them. The line just does not show them to the best advantage.  I hope to put the dresses on the dress forms for pictures, when I can.

       

Because I did nit have enough fabric for the length needed (the ladies are tall), I used a flat piece of lace edging from a worn-out curtain.

The girls  dress is called a Polonaise dress because the outer layer is like a fancy apron over the pink skirt, tied with ribbons at the side.  I got my idea for it from Dover Victorian paper doll fashion and coloring books, pictures of which I have posted at the end.

I already have made a dress for myself in this fabric and will try to show all three together when no one is wearing them.  I had to get up early to get these two on the line beforeI had to deliver them to the ladies who were wanting to wear them (my daughter and her daughter).

                      

On one of my visits to Hobby Lobby, I found the above acrylic stamp set in the sewing theme, for $1.79.  Sewing stamps are hard to find, so I was thrilled to get it.

                          

                                

                             

                              

There was a request for some words about rude comments.  I used to wonder why my father never got upset at insults and rude remarks leveled at him.  When I asked him why, and with his one-sided Texas grin, he answered that since he had been insulted by experts, insults didn't bother him anymore.  He was experienced.  You would have to understand his special humor to get that one.

While I have written about ignoring rude remarks, I have also come to see that we can never have polite society by ignoring bad behavior.  It must be corrected at first, instead of at last, because believe me, if rude remarks and bad manners get no resistance, people will "wax worse and worse."  Our problem is feeling intimidated and afraid of the backlash of correcting people, so we passively say nothing.  It is now my belief that it is quite appropriate to "reprove, rebuke and exort, with all long suffering."  If we get too focused on the long suffering element of it, we will forget to exhort people into better behavior.

At first it will be scary and upsetting to correct a rude remark.  You may begin by saying, "Excuse me, but that is so rude," and "hold on a minute. What you just said is not true."  Rude people have got away with their remarks because no one corrects them. Yes, it may become an uncomfortable argument, but you can be in control of it and lead it to the right conclusion.  You could role-play it with someone and learn to refute rude remarks.  

We need to make rude people feel uncomfortable.  We need to upset their apple carts by correcting them. We need to make rude people feel ashamed.  The rude ones need to feel nervous and upset by their own behaviour. As Moredecai said to Esther, (paraphrased) "Who knows: maybe God has put you here at this particular time for this special job."

The first thing you need to do in handling rude remarks is to train your mind to think, "Hmmm.  This person needs to educated." Or, "I think I need to educate you." Or,  "This remark is rude.  I must teach you a lesson."  Think a smile in your head when you say this to yourself, because this is where you get to be a teacher.

Ladies if you are too passive around rudeness you will do your children and the next generation of people a disservice, for they will allow themselves to be walked all over and all their efforts and work destroyed in the name of compassion and politeness.  Rude people do not need compassion.  They need correction. Or rather, we need to be compassionate enough to correct them.

The old people used to have sayings such as, "That's my business, not yours."  There were many sayings like this that regulated the rudeness in their realm. After hearing these sayings in response to their own rude remarks, a rude person got educated . They would start to say something rude or ask an impertinent question and then halt their speech in the middle of a sentence, knowing the answer that was coming.  You could see the dawning of the realization in their eyes almost the minute they uttered the rude question.  You see, the repeating of these sayings had educated them.

 If you could learn to respond with corrective language that also guides people into better behavior and educates them, you will have less trouble with rude remarks.  The rude people will find it too much trouble to meddle with you and avoid making trouble.  

While we always want to be kind and fair to others, with the ultimate goal of winning them to Christ, we need to realize that when we are basically mild and polite, rude people take it as permission to push us around.  There comes a time when we must push back and put them in their place.  

Of course there is a very good possibility that our corrections and admonitions to rude people may not have any effect. The perpetrators may be so far gone in their own conceit that they never alter their manners.  But be assured that even if they do not change, something you said to them will replay in their memories and drive them nuts til they confirm.

I suppose one of the highest concerns is losing a friendship.  Have faith that when you reprove the one in error, as the Bible says we must, that God will take care of the friendships in your life. He may not want you to hang on to rude people, anyway. He may have something better for you.

Alright, now I have posted this, and I will be waiting for the backlash of comments, but not to worry. Like my father, I have had rude remarks from experts.

This comment that came in would not fit the required limit of words on the comment section, so I am going to post it here.  It goes well with the theme of npimg problems in the bud before they flourish.

Dear Lady Lydia, 

There is one paragraph from your post, that if I had had it in my early life, it would have changed the entire direction of my life.  It is the paragraph that begins with "Ladies".

I have allowed such awful people to remain for years in my life, allowing their tyranny over my life, because I was taught that we should tolerate to the extreme, and always be kind, no matter what someone says.  I had a friend in my late teens and early twenties who was so awful to me, and so possessive of me.  I was so unhappy, but I was told to be a faithful friend to her because she needed to know love.  I found later that she would roast me behind my back, and I will never know how much damage it did.  I couldn't get away from her, she shadowed me everywhere.

When I began to have children, this friend called me up and chewed me out for not telling her that I was going to have a baby before I told someone else.  It was then that I finally had the courage to let her go.  I didn't even want to confront her, I just wanted to let her go away.  I was very blessed that she had just moved, and I could really just begin to ignore her and not worry about it anymore.  It took me 10 years to get away from her.  I never thought of her again, that is how unattached I was to her in my mind.  

I wish I had had the "permission" that you have given us in your article to let her go the first time I spent a day with her and was so unhappy with her company.  

Later, I was so tolerant, that I kindly moved over for my pushy mother-in-law.  She was such an unhappy person, and I knew that I could provide happiness for her by being kind and loving her out of it, and including her in my family's life.  The nicer I was, the more she hated me, and I found out later that she lied and degraded me so to other people that it shocked me when they told me some of the things she had said.  She hated my desire to submit to my husband, she thought that the more time she spent with me, she could show me how wrong I was about life. 

I tolerated her for 15 years without a retort ever, because now my husband's happiness was at stake as well, and I didn't want to distance him from his own family.  Things became so bad, however, that I finally talked to him about it and told him that I would never be rude to her, even now, but I needed to plainly answer some of the accusations she had made about me, and that from now on, if he would understand, I was going to politely challenge her about the things  she was saying about me.  He said that was fine, and that I should do that.   She is a very godless person, and essentially has no conscience.  

Well, I will tell you, after the first time I did that - I had to do it once with her, and once with her other son, the clan has essentially disowned us, and never spoken to us again.  You might think this is a sad ending, but it is actually the happiest one that could have been arranged, under the circumstances.  I have peace from them for the first time in my married life.  It is very sad, but more so of a sad comment on who they really are, and I feel especially for my husband, but it has been their own doing, not mine.  I was even so kind in my explanation to them of why I do things the way I do, and why I really thought that they would appreciate the way I am raising the family, rather than verbalizing things they think I am doing wrong.  Most people I know consider me an outstanding mother and wife, and come and ask me advice about how to raise such happy and smart children.  

I cannot really express the influence they had on me mentally, and they made me feel I was not "allowed" to do anything they wouldn't want me to do.  I know now that it is wrong to allow people like this to have even their toe in the door of your life at all.   I knew I didn't want to be around them, but I was mortally frightened of them gossiping about me and telling people about how rude I was if I ever disagreed with them about their behavior or their plans  for me.  As it turns out, these people will gossip about you no matter what you do, so you might as well go ahead and put a distance between yourselves and them.

If we are naive about this, we don't realize what is ahead for us.  It will not change for the better, it will change for the worse.   But this is only for certain people, and you just have to learn to recognize them as you go through life.  It is not for the person who makes a mistake with you, and then comes back and apologizes about it, or tells how they are learning to love others, etc.  That is just a nice, normal person, who has good intentions and doesn't realize.  

The people I'm talking about latch onto sweet people, because they see them as easy friends, and they take advantage. The thing is, they may not know what they are doing, but that ultimately doesn't make a difference - you just simply can't allow them to do this to you, whether they mean it or not.  Most times they don't know they are doing this because they really don't know God, and don't have a tender heart toward others.  Watch out about feeling too sorry for them.  

Some people have never experienced this kind of relationship, either, so they don't know that it exists out there, or that they should watch out for it.    

I just wish I would have had your words in the beginning, and then I would have never let these people ever feel that they had any control over my life at all.  The thing is, you most likely are going to loose the relationship, let it go early, before it has formed, and you have had to suffer the damage through all the years.  

I had a false sense of merit in tolerating their abuse.  Now I believe it is very unrighteous to allow such disobedient people to take over.  It is really putting their will above God's will in your life, which is evil.  It made me miss all those friendships with loving, happy people because I was cowering under these people's pushiness and demands, and hurting from their criticisms of me.  

Since then, I have kept myself free for the most loving ladies, and we keep good manners with each other, and we have ended up loving each other as sisters because of it.  I think of them so much, and am encouraged, and this is the right way to do things.  We allow each other complete freedom to live our own lives, don't gossip, and try to think of ways to help each other when we see a weakness, and be kind to each other.  We don't mind a lull in the conversation, because it just means we are weighing our words, and filtering things rather than filling the emptiness with sin.  

Now we have to move, and start all over again.  : (  Well, I am at least thankful for the time I've had with them. 

Thanks again, you have given us words of love, to protect us.  Thank you for caring about us more than the bad comments you might get.  -Mrs. J.