Thank you so much for your sweet comments and congratulations! The Lord is so good! We plan to move this coming weekend - I'm dreadfully excited!!
Anyway, over the weekend I finished this blouse from Folkwears Gibson Girl Blouse pattern. It is for my Little House on the Prairie outfit. The blouse only took two afternoons to make but I forgot to add additional length to the hem. I am lucky I am short waisted. I will have enough length to tuck into my skirt, but just barely. Next time I make this pattern I think I will add at least 5" to the length!
It is made from pink cotton calico and has white lace trim at the cuffs and collar. 
White covered buttons fasten the opening. I changed the design from a back opening to a front opening. Instead of making it open all the way down the front I did a short placket. It enables me to access Malachi's food source and didn't require so many buttonholes or buttons. 
I love this blouse. It is so comfortable! Once I get established in the new place I think I'll need to make a few more!Here is my blue calico sunbonnet, also for the LHOP ensemble:
Now I need to make the skirt, apron and I also want to make a waist length cape. But that will have to wait a bit. There is a bit of work to do at the new house that will have to take priority over sewing. I have quite a bit of yardwork to do to make the flower beds neat and we have a huge garden we need to weed whack, burn, and turn. Then I have some painting to do as well, on the inside. The dining room is deep red and the living room a dark tan color. I think a beige or off white would be pretty and really open everything up a lot. I love red and tan but on such huge expanses of wall. . .its a bit overwhelming. What colors do you all suggest? I have a bright lemon yellow bathroom and an electric-blue bedroom to do something to as well! :)
Love,
Sarah
When I was cleaning out my fabric a week or so ago I asked my mother if my sisters would like anything made out of orange satin. I have four yards of this heavy, silky satiny fabric and could not think of what to do with it. My mother replied that my eldest younger sister would like a bag like I made for my youngest younger sisters birthday. So this bag resulted! It is lined completely with the orange cotton print I made Judah's Civil War dress with and I experimented with a fabric covered cardboard strip for the bottom of the bag to help it hold its shape. Well, I hope she likes it. I certainly would not have thought of making an orange satin bag on my own. 
I've been making bonnets these past few days, part one of my Little House on the Prairie outfit. I couldn't find the butterick pattern I thought I had so I experimented with shapes and came up with my own. This is the most recent one, made of pale pink cotton with teeny, subtle white polka-dots. 
The hat hunting did not yield any hats. We went to the antique mall but it closed two hours before we thought it would so we had about twenty minutes to look around instead of the long time we thought we would have. There were hats aplenty indeed but nothing suitable for the 1914 dress. I at last found the perfect hat on eBay but I haven't ordered it yet. I don't know if I want to spend $20 on a hat that I might not wear very often. But I'm still thinking about it. I really want it. If I force myself to wear it often I will consider it money well spent. And I don't want to take pictures of my finished dress until I have a hat to wear with it.
We also found a beautiful white lace handbag with a silver elephant head clasp with long, long fringe. David said it looked like me. I didn't get it but I might go back for it sometime and see if it is still there. The other thing I found that I really wanted (but didn't get!) was a folk art painting of a little girl in an 1820's style pink dress.
David said if it is still there after we move I can go back and get it. It was incredibly cheap. I just love antique malls. I could decorate my whole house with findings from one. You just never know what you will discover!
And later today I shall go hat-hunting! What a delightful prospect. When did women stop wearing hats or bonnets? I must admit to being more of a bonnet wearer than a hat wearer. I think we need to bring them back.
The dress was a test run of my newly made, finally fitted bodice I was having so much trouble with last week. I finally got the darted bodice to fit smoothly and then I swung the bust dart to the shoulder and created a princess seam pattern. 
I only had three yards of this fabric to make the dress, so the skirt is not quite as full as I wanted it to be, just 2 panels of 45" wide fabric gathered to the waist. 
The sleeves are short puff ones. Nothing fancy or special. I was going to make cap sleeves but decided puffed ones would look nice in this fabric, which is very light and almost sheer. 
It is constructed almost entirely with mid-19th century methods. I hate zippers and wanted to avoid one at all possible cost. I can't get the durn things to go in right and its hard to zip oneself up if the zipper is in the back. I also needed a front opening so I could nurse the baby. So the bodice opens in the center front and the skirt opens at the center side utilizing a dog leg closure. The bodice is flatlined with white muslin and the only modern thing I did was to zig zag the raw edges so they won't ravell as much in the wash.
The print seemed to big to look nice as a blouse (my first thought). It was enough for an apron but I didn't want to use it to keep my other clothes clean. The fabric was too pretty. So I at last figured out how to make a long skirt with the yardage I had. I made two tiers. The top one was just full enough to go comfortably over my hips. This used a full width of the 45" fabric, cut in half for the front and back. I had to cut two strips to go on each side to pull the fullness up a bit, to around 50". With the remaining fabric I had enough to make a 15" ruffle almost three 45" wide widths full. I made a casing for narrow elastic at the top and it was done. A quick afternoons project. 
My current obsession is the clothing from the TV series Little House on the Prairie. I want to make a blouse and skirt like the grown up ladies wear and a sunbonnet. The clothes aren't so terribly odd as to look very out of place worn for everyday so I've been planning what I can do with the patterns I have and the fabric I have.
I have 
The skirts worn by the ladies in this series appear to have a fairly flat, gored front and lots of fullness in the back taken up in pleats. I have 
And 
The bonnnet won't be hard. I have an old Butterick pattern for a "pioneer" dres and "pioneer sunbonnet" that has the right look. :)
It still is not perfect. Here is the front. As you can see there are some funky wrinkles going on just to the side of the bust and under it. I don't know how to get these out. They were worse, but I pinned out a teeny bit more of the dart under the bust and it helped smooth things a bit. I don't know what to do about the pulling. I wonder if the weight of the skirt, when I attach it my "real" bodice, would pull it down enough to get out these wrinkles, or is it another fitting issue? Sigh. 
Oh, and yes, the neckline is wavy and the shoulders have a bit too much fabric in them, but I can easily take that out when I draw in the new neckline and position of the shoulders. It's the bust and below that has me discouraged right now. 
I think my problem is that:
Here is a lovely young lady with Malachi, who would not look at me or the camera and favored another lovely young lady, who was standing to the side, with his long-lashed glances. 
This is the only picture David took of my new dress. It took me a long time to get the trim sewn on it and I still haven't applied it to the back yet. I like it, but I think I should have worn my green dress yesterday. The close fitting sleeves were hot and the dark color seemed to absorb the heat more than my other dress does. I was happy that even with a 135" hem circumference I was still able to wear this dress with my cage. Cages are wonderful things to wear in hot weather. And looking through more pictures of ladies from the period I find that more often than not their skirts were not any fuller than this one. Hmm. Perhaps that means I can take that extra panel of fabric out of my green dress skirt and use it for something else. Like a dress for Judah and a tunic for David, who are both fast outgrowing their clothes! Before our next event (in August) I really need to make my sheer dress. I think that would have been perfect to have worn yesterday and perhaps would have prevented me from getting sick. I need to be brave enough to cut into it.
Here is David with his perpetual reenactment-cigar. I got his vest done on Friday afternoon but he doesn't like it because I vented the back center seam. I had forgot his horror of vents. Last year I vented the back seam of his sack coat but he made me sew it back up. I can't really sew this vent back up due to the cut of the vest back so I need to take the vest apart at the side and shoulder seams and put a new back in. And a new lining, if I can figure out how. I lined this one with white cotton but it is horribly stained with the sweat that David sweated yesterday. 
A last picture of the baby. He was mostly happy but at the time I took this picture he was hot and very tired and didn't like laying upon the grass and didn't like laying on my lap because he could feel the rungs from my cage beneath him. His underdresses are getting too small for him too. Thankfully I made a big overlap in the back so I can just move the button closer to the edge to make it bigger. I really hope these last him the rest of the season!
Happy Father's Day!
But, picture it. Here in central Illinois, most events take place in a flat, open area. Few trees to provide shade. The ground is usually cemented and what is not cemented is coarse grass, recently mown, with hard, stubbly stalks on which to pitch your tent and make your habitations. The morning sun is blazing and hot. The afternoon sun is drowsy and hot. Smells of Hot Dogs and Funnel Cakes press themselves heavily upon the nostrils. Much sightings of polyester and ostritch plumes emerging from tiny straw hats, or enormous boquets of plastic flowers bedecking wide brimmed ones. Massive outbreak of Hoop Lines in skirts. Fashion ranging from 1770's quasi-colonial to 1970's Pioneer-Little-House-on-The-Prairie. A fondness for proudly displayed blue and red coolers seems to be the pervasive idea.
A quiet, meandering creek, banked by soft green grass with tiny flowers nodding therein. Slender, lovely trees bending over the waters provide restful shade. 
A worn pathway leading over a rustic, turn-of-the-century covered bridge into a little historical town, complete with a boardwalk, a school, a restuarant and general store, two churches, homes, a blacksmith, a woodwork shop, a candle shop and other misc. buildings. . .
The air is still and quiet and the low murmur of voices can be heard as ladies in sunbonnets and well fitted work dresses bend over their cooking fires or walk modestly through town in company of their citizen husbands. Soldiers with good facial hair and authentic uniforms lounge in the shade; some nap beneath their shelter halves. A "village green" in the center of the town features a white painted gazebo and a black iron fence encloses it. A wonderful place for certain little boys to run and play while Mama and Papa rest upon a bench in this lovely little park. 
Did I chase children? Yes. But here. . .there was so much for them to do and so much for them to explore. Everything they did that delighted them equally delighted me. Visit the church? Of course! 
While little David appreciated the acoustics that magnified the sound of his boots stomping upon the floor I appreciated the coolness, the soft light sifting through the windows, the rows of dark wood pews, soft and glossy, facing the pulpit.
It truly was the best reenactment I have been to for many years. I had heard that it was dying and at last dead and so was curious to see what was really the case. What I found was indeed a smaller number of people and a smaller number of vendors but the quality had vastly, vastly improved. It seems to definitely be a Progressive Event now. Can I describe the thrill I felt when I realized I was looking all around me at women wearing things that I wanted to copy? One lady in particular had a lovely, airy striped slat bonnet. The curtain floated so prettily behind her as she walked. Hmm. . .a new use for the striped fabric I still have on hand? :)
Nothing so very extraordinary, but David was quite impressed with the neat rows of tidy tents all in a row. Very military and not commonly seen at the events we usually go to. So here it is.
After a firm talking to prior to getting him out of his carseat, little David suprised me and kept his cap on his head for most of the day. He took it off only after it began to rain, upon which action Judah snatched it up and wore it for the rest of the day. Judah wore his new corded sunbonnet for about five minutes. He didn't like the fact he could only see straight ahead of him while wearing it. Sigh. I guess I will save it for Malachi.
Near the little village green, this pretty little home sits on the south east corner. The gate was open and inviting and a brick pathway led up the door. What more invitation did the boys need? 
Judah peered in the window, enjoying the fact that it went nearly to the ground. 
David enjoyed the fact the gate was loose and he attempted to shut it on several occasions. 
Inside the home Judah explored the rooms that were open. Here he is in the hall between the kitchen and the front room.
The battle took place only shortly after we arrived. We had forgotten to take into account that we would gain an hour after we crossed the Indiana state line. We thought we'd arrive by 11:00 a.m. and have a bit of time to walk around and have lunch, but alas, we arrived around noon and David immediately set off in persuit of the commanding officer for Federal medical. He discovered that the hospital was set up in a large barn.
While he mingled with the other surgeons and stewards and the young men who seemed to be helping with the miscellaneous, more menial tasks, the boys and I enjoyed the tree-shaded park.
David, of course, also soon discovered a sutler with cigars and got his characteristic two. He then came back to retrieve us.
The battle was situated on the far southern end of the village. We passed through the village, passed the barn, passed a large pavilion where the evening dance would later take place and passed the sutler tents. We passed the lemon shake-up stand that was beyond the sutler tents and then passed through the Confederate camp. We passed a farmhouse. By this time we were on the northern end of the battlefield, which was placed within a valley. The creek bordered one edge, a steep hill the other. Woods were all around. The path grew muddy. Little David lost one of his shoes. A kind young man from the Confederate Camp ran after us with the shoe. Otherwise, I would not have known until much later that it was missing. David left us to traverse to the far southern end of the battlefield and took his place among the other medical persona and the ambulance. I could tell who he was only by his height and his red checkered shirt. 
This was the hardest part of the day for me. I put the two older boys in the wagon and spread Malachis quilt on the grass. He rolled to his tummy and scooted his way to the edge of the quilt. A few moments later, he was meditatively chewing some grass stalks. David and Judah were for a few minutes amused with drinking water in their little glasses, poured from their daddy's canteen. But once their thirst ceased, their interest did too.
David and the others attended to them. David was the most handsome of them all. I love how he looks, carrying his doctors bag!
We ate our lunch then and little David napped for almost an hour. Malachi nursed and Judah was full of energy. He did not nap at all. Once little David woke up we set out to explore the village a bit more. David wanted to look more closely at the sutlers. Malachi and little David were packed into the wagon and Judah, with tireless chubby legs, walked.
The wagon is not period correct at all, but we figure it is better than our modern double stroller. I can't seem to get around the need to have something to help me haul the children and the few necessary items I need to bring for them. It has come in very handy. Other mothers and fathers had wagons too, but theirs were much more period looking. We inquired as to where they got them and one man told us they were from Ireland. Well. I doubt we could afford to purchase a wagon from Ireland and then pay for the cost to ship it here but perhaps David could build one similar to it, if we could find wheels somewhere.
The boys found a wooden stairway and went up it with great excitement. Steps! I was worried that they weren't supposed to be up there but I was reassured that it was entirely fine for them to go upstairs if they desired to. 
I went up too. A large collection of antique farm equipment was stored up there. Judah found something with a wheel on it. He loves wheels. So he spun it round and round and round. It entertained him for quite a while. 
Here are both my older boys. In the same picture, too. A rather rare occurence. 
The rain did not stop. Little David enjoyed the barn but after a while Judah grew weary of it and ventured outside into the rain. He got quite wet and quite muddy. He picked clover and brought it to me and watched a trickle of water streaming off of a roof corner with intense concentration. He was happy when his daddy bought him and his brother a watermelon candy stick from the general store. 
As it was wet and rather chilly and Malachi was damp from the rain in his little strapped underdress we decided to come home earlier than we had planned. We cannot wait until next year and are looking forward to it very much.
And yes! I had a "Magic Moment". While I was in the barn, during the rain, the surgeon and one of his young helpers came in. They spoke about lighting candles and the surgeon sent the lad in search of some in the upstairs of the barn. I felt I was looking back into history then. It was wonderful.