The other week my friend needed my help sewing some Colonial Days dresses for her daughter, Miss L, herself and the neighbor girl. Fortunately I had some free time because it turned out that we had only a week to make three dresses. Yikes! I loaned out my old Bernina sewing machine (the Nova since it's a trusty workhorse) and brought over pins, scissors and a pincushion. We were in business. I directed my friend in cutting, pinning and pressing while I sewed. The first try at a bodice just didn't fit Miss L, who's blessed with a long torso and soon to be tall girl. I figured it'd be much easier to just drape and make a new pattern directly on Miss L using some muslin. After much fidgeting it was done. I'm so glad that I remembered how to do this from college days.
After that dress was sewn we realized that it'd work for the neighbor girl as long as we kept it shorter. Yay! That definitely made things easier. Finally with just two days remaining until Colonial Days I showed my friend how to use the sewing machine and how to sew a straight seam. With just one day to go I was exhausted so I left the three dress hems and the rest of the skirt to sew on the final dress. (I figured that a zipper would be a pain for a newbie sewist so I did that and the back skirt sections of the third dress.) I calculated that I had put in about 32 hours into the project not to count the time that my friend put in that last night.
This is what the table looked like when I went home. (My in-laws were coming in and I needed to do some last minute cleaning and shopping.)
And this is what the girls looked like before they ran off to school. By the time they arrived at school, both girls had fichus, mop caps, and a flower pin holding together the fichu. My friend ran a booth demonstrating how to use quill pens and sealing wax for letters. According to her everyone was quite happy. (I've changed their faces to hand drawn ones. I'm thinking that they'll have a big giggle when they see it.)
Now my friend has the sewing bug and wants to learn how to make clothes for her girls, Miss L and Miss J. Always nice to get new people interested in sewing. See, it's addictive isn't it? Well I have a few projects that I have to get back to .. some quilting on the round robin quilt and a pincushion for the Fab Little Pincushion Swap on flickr. Pictures to come after this weekend.
