We used the same pattern, but this time in an interesting gingham variation. See the tiny twists in the fabric? It almost looks like the fabric has been smocked in a diamond pattern. A little optical illusion.
Rickrack at the collar, vintage blue buttons, and most especially, long sleeves with "a little puff at the top."
Apparently this part of Betsy-Tacy and Tib was just too good.
Time to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday--I'm so glad he has it at this season when it's a joy to putter in a warm kitchen, enjoy the golden light on the table, and cook again the rich foods we remember from last year's cold weather.
Can you read that menu? We started with a zucchini and gruyere tart (Bella made it, with puff pastry). Then a gorgeous salad, red lettuces with sprouts, pomegratate seeds, and candied walnuts (definitely will be making this again!).
Roast beef, mashed potatoes put through a ricer (you know it's a fancy dinner then!), gravy, roasted brussels sprouts, rolls.
Then, in honor of the man's love for pie, instead of a birthday cake an Upstanding Apple Pie served with homemade vanilla ice cream and coffee. We baked it in a springform pan and went for three vertical inches, with local apples.
Of *course* cards followed, and though we said we'd let Grandpa win in honor of his birthday, Bella did the honors. So, a revenge match.
Next year.
Clara wears this gorgeous ruffled sweater over a little cotton 1940s housedress. The colors are just right together. Thrift store, you are so good to us.
Clara has changed cello teachers and now has to go Out of Town for her lesson, an undertaking which takes a good four and a half hours start to finish since she takes a ninety-minute lesson from a generous, unworldly professor who never looks at the clock, and it's forty-five miles away. It's too long to leave the younger girls at home, and too long to take them along.
Lately though, to the satisfaction of everyone, the grandparents have started having Bella and Daisy as visitors during the lesson. But oh the driving was no fun--until Clara started Reading.
We're working on the Chronicles of Narnia and no one wants to do anything except get on the interstate so we can have another chapter.
My favorite part is that after we're home, Daisy rolls around on the floor reviewing the chapters we've read, until she can quote long passages verbatim, from memory. If it's about Reepicheep or a Bulgy Bear, she's there.
My Daisy had definite ideas of her own: winter dresses, stat, and no negotiating in the fabric store. We came home with her four choices in fabrics and got to work. She stuck to a very close palette of blues and browns. 
I actually was fascinated by this process. She has long observed *every* detail of dress, and regaled us at age three with excessively complicated descriptions of the costumes at a musical she attended. I mean, she was throwing around the terms empire waist, pleats, and square collar.
So no surprise that she knew what she wanted in her winter wardrobe.
Some turquoise buttons down the back of this soft, fine corduroy. Elbow sleeves. Peter Pan collar. Plain hem.
Made from (the out of print, I think) Butterick 6487, with a few modifications to please her highness.
It's so quick and fun when the cut-out squares are waiting in a basket. Then it's just a matter of picking a color to work with, and joining up pairs, then doubling and doubling them til there are lots of strips of eight squares.
Then once there are enough, making four big blocks. And setting them in muslin strips, and then backing them with a sweet cherry print from the stash.
This one's heading into the shop.
If my pillow form weren't oversized, you'd be able to see the plain canvas border around my piecing. I like the border. It calms things down.
. . . from the tree halfway down the driveway. It was Daisy's life dream to pick them into a basket covered with a cloth. Sigh.
These glass domes, which are all over magazine pages, are also over the thrift store for just pennies. They truly are lovely and I've started picking them up when I'm shopping, after being inspired by my artistic sister-in-law who does the most elaborate, layered visual stories in hers.
Of course, mine at this point just hold a rock and a sprig. But I'm thinking of becoming a more complicated person!
'Men and women can't do housework together without quarrelling. Different methods, my dear. Men can't help in a job, you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you're doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.'
'The cardinal difficulty,' said MacPhee, 'in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, "Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard." The female for this is, "Put that in the other one there." And then if you ask them, "In where?" they say, "in there, of course."'
I haven't actually been sewing my head off--I made this Ceylon dress in June. And enjoyed wearing it so much this summer--I even camped in it. The lightweight cotton shirting is so light it practically floats off the dress-form. When I make it next, I'll do it in a little heavier fabric. In fact, I'm thinking of a stable wool jersey, or a crepe, and making one up with long sleeves for colder weather.
Don't be intimidated by the number of different little pieces in this pattern. Lots of seams can mean lots of opportunity for improved fitting. And the instructions are very, very careful and clear!
This dress very effectively balances comfort and flattery, with that wide set-in cummerbund-style waist. Sail on, Colette!
She says that if she ever does run a bakery, it will be a savory bakery. She tried a new Nigella recipe, this one for sausage and spinach pie baked in butter pastry in a springform pan. Despite misreading the directions and so omitting the step of *cooking the spinach*, this one came out great.
I feared a sodden mess because of all the water cooking out of the spinach during baking, but nothing bad happened.
I think the only savory pie in the cookbook she hasn't made yet is the steak-and-kidney pudding. I've told her no go--the lack of a pudding basin is only the beginning of my objections to that one!
Why, oh why, was there a cashmere cardigan (Ralph Lauren) with the tags still on, in my size and favorite color, hanging on the end of the rack at the thrift store? It wasn't even my birthday!
Another design from Colette Patterns, the Oolong dress. It's bias-cut, fully lined, and slips over the head with no closures. Easy, right?
Ha! Not for the faint of heart. It is very well-designed, and goes together sensibly, but all those pieces cut out one at a time on the bias will wear a girl out.
I used a gorgeous cotton lawn, with the most scrumptious sheer crispness-but-also-some-drape, and it was perfect. Lined with plain white lawn, it doesn't need a slip.
Extra credit to the designer for the instructions to press the give out of the pieces by stretching them gently down the ironing board. It really made the bias easier to control, and I've never done it before. Truly, Colette patterns are a sewing education.
The pillowcases all wore out, like yesterday. I knew this day was coming, it's why I had bought a big piece of white cotton sheeting. I wish I could cut an even number of pillowcases out of it instead of five, but oh well.
At least they're crisp and new and don't have holes. And I can embroider them.
Thrifted embroidery transfer and thread and hoop and floss and probably needle also. I love making something from nothing!
Bella pays it forward by putting the leftover cream cheese frosting from her last baking project between the layers of a new chocolate cake. Efficiency!
"The house was immaculate, and Carney's bedroom was as fresh as the sweet peas on the dressing table. Isobel's rack in the bathroom was a snowy drift of towels. Olga had polished the silver. She had roasted a ham and baked a pot of beans; she had made a molded salad, two kinds of cookies, and a cake. The menus Mrs. Sibley and Carney had planned were written neatly and hung on a hook in the pantry."
Cute, cute, cute--and if you omit the sleeve tabs, sort of normal! I used all one fabric for this, no contrast yoke, but did make self-piping for the collar and for around the front panels.
It's got a little bit of a western feel because of the piping, and Clara generally wears her brown cowboy boots with it.
A tie belt is my best friend for fitting this slim girl.
