A Little Red Dress

I had cut out a dress for my daughter before the holidays and it's high time I finished it.  The shift was already done.

For this, I used the pattern from The Tudor Child.  For some reason that I don't remember, I didn't follow the sewing instructions.  In hind sight, I should have. The dress would have been better with the addition of interlining and the hand sewing the lining in place.

But, oh, the eyelets!  I did take the time to stitch the eyelets. In the past, I've often been lazy and just poked the lacing holes and expected the lace to hold them open.  Kid's outfits are often quickly out-grown, so I'm not sure it's worth the effort to stitch them all.

I followed the pattern for a 6 yr old, even though my daughter just turned 4.  She's tall, and looking at modern size 6 clothes, I thought this pattern would have room for her to grow.  It has some extra room width-wise, but is barely long enough for her.  I'll have add an extension on the skirt soon.

Update: we actually made it out to an event!  Here's the finished ensemble with the too small cap and a too small apron.

Lace - A First Step

On Saturday, thanks to my wonderful husband and family, I was able to take a day of needle lace classes.  They were taught by two wonderful ladies (one of whom I've known for years). Check out Graces amazing page for patterns and how to instructions.

While making needle lace is glacially slow, it was rather fun.  We used a much more coarse linen that extant examples from the 15-17th centuries.  We stitched with 35/2 thread; our teachers prefer to use 80/2 or even 100/2.  That's the finest you can buy anymore, and it's still not as fine as the period examples.  The linen fabric we used is Barry linen from Gray Lines Linen.

Here's my progress after about 5 hours of class.