Road Trip Day 1

Road trip Day 1: Oregon, California, Nevada

Today we covered 417 miles, taking 7 hours.

Above, the drive along Lake Klamath Falls in Oregon, looked very much like the scenic route around Turnagain Arm in Alaska.

What Mrs. Sherman wore:

Because we covered three states in one day, I didn't get to have a dress for each of them. What you see here is a photo taken in Lapine, Oregon, which was getting some rain at the time. This is a very comfortable rayon dress I got for $9 at Walmart. The label is "Time and Tru" and today it was just right for car travel. It is a red and black check, and of course Mr. S. has a matching shirt.  Note the red umbrella with black dots. 

We have enjoyed driving the old highways through small towns....

an old hotel in a small town in California.

This picture is for anyone who is concerned about crowded neighborhoods. There is still plenty of room.

 In the 417 miles we drove today, there was not one tea room, and gas stations were 80 miles apart.

We tried to avoid the speedways, but there was no way around Reno, so we drove through. We did not stop for the evening meal because the traffic through Reno was going 70-75 m.p.h. and it was very dark, with a lot of car light glare, so we just drove through and went to the next small town, 30 miles away.  It was so tense for me that I didn't remember to take a picture of the lights of Reno as we drove across. 

We have lived out in our country home at the Manse so long we did not realize how much more crowded and fast the traffic had become out there in the fast-track world. We took the first hotel we saw, because we were (well, I was) too rattled to look for anything else. We are having cheese and crackers with hot tea tonight and nothing will tempt us to get back on the road even to look for a restaurant.  

We had not been on an elevator in such a long time (in our town there is usually only one or two levels (storeys) in the commercial buildings), that we stood inside and talked for 15 minutes after the door shut, before it occurred to us to push the button to go to the 2nd level. I guess in the back of my mind I thought it would automatically go up to the 2nd floor when the door shut.  When you live in a small town, the elevator automatically goes to the 2nd floor as soon as the door slides such. But there are now 4 and 5 and 6 storey hotels now ;-) 

 I didn't have time to make the fancy dress and hat for Area 51, so I got another Time and Tru dress, which I will show you tomorrow.  In the meantime, you might enjoy finding some of the Time and Tru maxi dresses online. 

Thank you for your prayers for our safety, and thank you for your visit here!

Resting

Greetings. We are resting today, but it doesn't slow down my mind from making ideas for more to do!

Above picture: The hummers ignored commercial food but when I made my own, they visited more often. Hummingbird food recipes are available online.

Our guests from Tennessee only stayed a very short time, having spent most of their vacation on the way to our place,  so we quickly took them to see a few sights:

This has to be called "Sun River, wider than a mile," because of the stream of sunlight on the water towards the close of the day.

Earlier,  this is the way the waves sparkled. I kept thinking of fabric to go with!

We enjoyed watching  approximately every 7th wave hit the rocks like this:

Above: it looks like fabric colors here--fluffy white cotton shawl over a dark blue skirt, light blue blouse, and brown lace up boots. What do you think? (I will certainly try to settle down for a moment and put a sketch here of the nature inspired fashion.)

I went into one of the shops and had a close look at this April Cornell dress to see if I could make one like it. It was made of polyester, and I was thinking about making one in cotton, linen, bamboo, or some other natural woven cloth.  This cost $130 and I joked with my husband that it was such a bargain I should get two!   There may be enough pattern pieces in my pattern collection to create something like it. It looked looked very good on me and it is an a-line, with princess seams, with a nice waistline.

Mrs. Tennessee Company made a delicious

southern breakfast for us and I felt transported into another country! She was amazing. She said she did not know what to do with herself so she had to cook.

I want to get back into sewing dresses soon.  I have the most unusual fabric, which is 105 inch printed muslin often used by quilters for backing.  It looks like something which used to be made for cloth sacks, mattress or pillow ticking. It might be something suitable for making sheets. As there is just enough for a skirt or a simple dress, I am curious about how it would look. 

I bought it because of the dusty rose color, which is not easy to find anymore since it is not as fashionable a color.  In the photo it looks brown but the color is the old fashioned dusty rose, like velvet.

How about a very loose pullover dress with lots of drapey fabric at the sleeves and hem, just for cool wearing at home.  I hope to get started on this during the week and if it is successful you will see a picture of it here. The sketch show a raglan sleeve and little tucks at the waist:

What would you call this print?  Post Mark, Spencerian, Cargo, Faded Rose? Maybe "Other" would be a good name.

One of my grandchildren and I are enjoying drawing clothing designs and naming the garments after places we have visited or things we have been or things we are experiencing: mountain, truck stop, road side, sea side, light house, garden, clouds, waterfall, desert, visit, moving, writing (a writing dress), afternoon tea, etc. We have sketched ever so many dresses and I hope to include some of her sketches here too.

The print looks like something from the 1800's

A quick stop at Goodwill yielded these two cups for $3.20 each. Their good condition showed they had been in a shelf and never used in their lifetime: no scratches, fading of color, cracks or chips.

This one has a print of a nasturtium on it.

Interesting how the labels on these old teacups is sometimes off center.  I would say this is from the 1960's.

The cup also looks good on this orphan saucer:

This one below is probably from the 1970's.

The pedestal on the tea cup gives it a quite a royal appearance, and Red Velvet is an elegant name.

It feels good to have new teacups, and since a couple of others have been chipped and retired to the broken China box and the garden, these two replace them nicely.

If I had not stopped by to chat, I may have had the dress cut out now. Even a simple post absorbs a lot of time but it is something that makes me feel relaxed, that I enjoy. I certainly hope all of you are able to enjoy something today!

Roses in the Hedgerows

A Still Life of Roses by Olaf August Hermansen, Denmark 1849-1897 

We had a most pleasant Lord's  Day worship service today and now I want to share what we ladies are wearing today.  These dresses are so comfortable in formal and informal situations that they can be worn to church and there is no need to change into something more comfortable after church.

One of the reasons I have so many sewing posts this year is that I had been buying pieces of fabric as I could afford it, and have finally got enough to make sets of matching dresses. For those of you who have not been following  my progress, I am making clothing for the home. These dresses are worn with  full-length bib style aprons at home,  or a coordinating solid color  jacket when going out.

Above: Dressing three generations; sizes 12 ladies, 8 girls, 10 ladies.  Though they look flat and droopy on the line (just like on the rack at a store) these clothes fit well and look very good on the ladies for which they were made.  

The name of this set of my "line" of clothing is Roses in the Hedgerows, made from another Fabric Traditions print, cotton lawn from Walmart.  The better fabrics at Walmart are now getting up to $8.00 or more a yard .

When looking at the pretty girls dresses in Costco, I sometimes hear other shoppers bemoaning the fact that similar dresses are not available in grown-up sizes.  These clothes are my attempt to use old patterns and pieces of new patterns combined (a sleeve here, a skirt there) to make easy-to wear clothing for the home.      

The garments are all cotton, roomy at the waistline, adding comfort  when sitting. Sometimes when you try on a commercial garment, it seems to be comfortable while you are standing up, but when you get it home and wear it while sitting, it is too tight or the waistline rides up. The dresses, above, are loose yet slimming.

Girls dress has low waist, an elastic band in the back to cinch in the fullness,  and is buttoned in front to make it easy to fasten.

Mother's dress has a Victorian waistline with a pretty V shape at the center of the waist, a gathered skirt and a fitted blouse.

My dress, above is from a very easy pattern with one piece for back and one piece for front.  When worn, the fabric falls into these nice folds that look like pleats.

Sleeves have been one thing I have not liked in recent years in manufactured clothing, because they are so flat and usually no more interesting than a tee-shirt sleeve and not very flattering to women's arms.  I have enjoyed giving sleeves various interesting touches such as gathers and tucks. The sleeves on these dresses are all gathered on the outside by a piece of elastic on the inside, stretched while sewing to give the sleeves a gathered and pleated look.

The girl's dress has matching rose shapes novelty buttons.

I wanted to show you the weights I am using, made of hardware wrapped in ribbon.  This makes sewing so much faster, because I no longer use straight pins and can skip the tedious pinning and up pinning of pattern pieces,  which can be backbreaking work.  No longer do I have to be concerned about dropped pins that someone might accidently run across.

There is a lot more to be said about the subject of dressing.  I am afraid many Christian ladies have adopted the attitude of the prevailing culture of not caring about clothes.  Even in religious circles there can be an attitude that it is vain or conceited to care about clothing, and that wearing something pretty and feminine is somehow ostentatious or selfish.  However, for the beginning of the Bible, God showed what He thought about clothing and it shows from Genesis to Revelation how important clothing is in both a physical and a spiritual way.

Clothing shows many things about ourselves but it also has an effect upon how we think and feel, on our moods and our outlook on life  and even our motivation or ambition.  When I consider purchasing fabric, I have to think about the mood it evokes when I picture it in my mind as a ladies garment. The roses on the blue background fabric in the clothes I have featured today make a lady feel happy and energized and in love with God's beautiful gifts of color and scent in the creation. I like the blue background because it seems natural to see flowers with a blue sky in the background.

Remember when dressing beautifully that there is always going to be someone who is against you and who will try to stop you from what you want to do.  They will use intimidating and demoralizing words to make you feel bad or make you feel you are not blending in with everyone else.  It takes a long hard journey sometimes for some people to overcome this peer-approval dependency.  

The most important peer-dependency is the mother-daughter relationship where little girls want to dress like their mothers and stand near them, hold their hand, and be just like their mothers.  The world does not like that at all and resents it because  when there is a loving mother and daughter relationship, some  people do not have a hope of controlling one or the other with their ideas or their clothing styles.

If you want your girls to be close to you, try wearing matching or co-ordinating clothing at home and in public.  It helps create a sense of identity, belonging and family cohesiveness.  

Sleeve gathered vertically down the middle with elastic gives a pretty pleated or smocked effect.

Card Sharing

A Rosy Little Christmas by Susan Rios

 

http://www.susanriosdesign.com/a-rosy-little-christmas.html#

If you go to the Susan Rios Designs site, you can click on this painting for a much larger view.

Today I am sharing a couple of Christmas cards. There is no artist cited anywhere on the back of the card. I like this one because the design and decor idea could be used year round.

 

The roses make this tree very soft and attractive; comfortable.

This is a card with the teacup put on 3-d tape.

I finished the mother and daughter dresses from the flannel. They do not look as good on the hanger..they are wrinkled like the picture shows. The camera shows two different shades but in reality the fabric is the lighter color. It is a high quality cotton flannel with a bit of a sheen to it like polished cottons, and is very smooth to the touch.

 

 

 

 

These dresses look very elegant on the models, but the photographs do not give them justice.

Close view of the girls buttons.

I used the large buttons for the mother dress and the small ones for the daughter dress. They matched the snowflakes in the fabric print.

I hope this brightened your day.

Lydia

 

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