A Trip Down Memory Lane--1970s Version

 I learned how to sew very early in my life. 

Back in the day, there were no Wal-marts anywhere and in our little town there was a JC Penny's for ready made clothes. My folks never had much money and Mom made most of our clothes except for socks and underwear. Sometimes we would get a bunch of hand-me-downs. It was a lot of fun to sort and see if anything would fit. I hemmed my first dress by hand when I was 5 and at 9 sewed a skirt for a 4-H project.  Mom would buy material for us to make clothes, but if we wanted "store-bought" we bought it ourselves. 

I sewed my entire wardrobe for high school and I saved some of my favorites.

Everything I saved has a story, but not everything here is going to be saved.

I made this dress for Lynette from material and pattern that Mom made for me. 

The original dress is long gone.

Mom made me this skirt when I was in 7th or 8th grade for the Christmas concert. All the girls decided we should wear long skirts and I begged Mom for one. It must have been a particularly hard season for us because Mom cried. I don't know if she ever knew I caught her. It is made from a weird and ugly piece of double knit with a pantyhose elastic. I loved it. I was so happy to have it. 

When Gunne Sax was a thing.

Plaid skirts and velour tops, 1980

I bought the turtleneck at Penney's.

In the days when everyone wanted to what season they were and what colors when with that diagnosis.

Mom and I were summers. I have since learned that generally one picks out the colors that look best on them. I seemed to be drawn to rather odd colors. I learned the "right" way to sew with linings, top stitching, cords, zippers and no short cuts. 

Nowadays, you can look on YouTube for ideas, and videos and short cuts. Lynette made her first skirt from a video and I was impressed by the ease she mastered a skill that I spent years learning. 

I've never regretted knowing the advanced skills. When you know those, you can also know when shortcuts are appropriate. 

On our way home from a FHA event when I was a senior, we stopped at a mall to shop and I bought this skirt for $25. From 7th grade to graduation I made my money from my daily paper route and babysitting. 

The way I remember it, the above skirt was supposed to be worn with a fancy, lacy blouse. So, I made one. Twenty five dollars-es  don't grow on trees. They don't now and they didn't then.

Prairie blouses and skirts also were "the thing" in the early 80s. I obviously was making pretty good money off my paper route, because I bought these two blouses.

I made this skirt after one I saw in a store. The fad at the time was to wear a lace-edged petticoat under it, but that has been long gone. I also had a plain navy skirt like this without the ribbon to wear with the blue striped blouse. I entered it in the fair as a 4-H project, and got the last place because the ribbon wasn't sewn down on both edges like it was "supposed to". I was a bit aggravated since the one I copied had only the one edge sewed down. That was such a big thing back in the day and a "who cares anymore" thing, now. 

The elastic has completely gone out of the waist of this dress. Chambray was thing as well.

This in another set I loved, I put a lot of work in my creations and it's blue, which is my favorite color. 

This was another Gunne Sax pattern I was proud of. Getting the waist band stiff enough with crinoline type stuff was a real piece of work. I made another of purple checked gingham. There were two kinds of the fabric, one with large checks and one with small. My cousins all had skirts of different colors with the large checked material in the place of the blue in the pictures and the small in the skirt. I made mine because I wanted to be part of that and made mine the opposite. I was chagrined, but it was good payback for my envy and pride.

I made this jacket for my last big 4-H project and modeled it at the fair. I made it was a straight skirt which is long gone and a circle skirt that was made into a poodle skirt for one of the girl's projects in elementary school. This was one of the hardest projects I ever did. 

This dress I made especially for my senior pictures. 

Mom made this dress, my graduation dress. She hadn't made any clothes for me for years. I don't have words to explain what it meant for her to make this very important (at the time) dress for me.

I remember wearing this dress to some old lady's house and it was hot, with no air conditioning and I was sweating in the old chair I was sitting in and some of the finish came off the chair and stained my dress. Mom washed it out and I don't remember what she used. I also remembered to watch where I sat!

For awhile our sewing machine was in the living room and it was a good place to sew because Mom was always helpful when thread snarled up or things went wrong. She kept her patience a lot better than I ever did. 

I wish these photographs were better. 

My camera is pretty good, but tends to yellow the photos in the house. 

I'm only keeping the first two, the lacy blouse and the purplish skirt and vest.

The rest will be donated. I wonder if anyone will be able to wear them. I was skinny as a rail in those days. 

A Trip Down Memory Lane--90s and 2000s Version

I continued my sewing for my girls. I made t-shirt dresses and skorts, and skirts for every day. My favorite was making Sunday dresses. These aren't in any order. If I made them for Lorene, very likely Lynette wore them in her turn.

Velvet--Lorene

Daisy Kingdom--Lynette

Both girls

Lynette--when sheer fabrics were in.

Lynette's velvet

Daisy Kingdom--Lynette

Cape--Lynette

Made from a chenille bedspread when making teddy bears and things from them was also a thing.

Bonita made this dress for Lynette

This was a hand-me-down

I bought this one after seeing an ad in a Penney's catalog, (yes that was a thing) featuring a little girl with blonde hair just like Lynette's. That was before her front hair was cut off by her brother. 

She was two.

Another Daisy Kingdom for Lynette. I did the smocking and made a doll dress just like it. 

Daisy Kingdom patterns came with a doll pattern.

Bonita made these for Lorene and Nathan

Lynette--I was into smocking and I don't remember how aggravating the piping was. I really dislike making piping, let alone sewing it on.

Lynette--I bought this one. It's a beautiful thin dress with tucking and embroidery. It's a pale blue. 

Bonita made this lacy dress and smocked bonnet for Lorene.

She made this dress as well, the matching one for Lynette is at her house for her girls.

Lorene--her sheer dress

I made two of these. I got the trim as a "free gift" from a sewing company that sent catalogs.

One was for Lorene and one for a friend. 

It seems like the preponderance of dresses here were Lynette's. Some of the ones I made for Lorene I passed on to Paislee. I'd like to take pictures of those.

I'm keeping the really fancy ones.

The rest are going.

 

A New Year For Oldish Stories

I started my new year by throwing away some old things.  I've been going through closets and deep cleaning and today I finished the bedroom. Today, finishing the bedroom means taking photos of these dolls and handmade clothes to remember.

I made this doll years ago, for I don't know what reason, except I was into dolls at the time and had a pattern and no kids. Dorothy named this one Emily Margaret and she's the only rag doll I have. She has little pantaloons under her dress. 

This china doll was put together by my Aunt Barb. I carefully played with it all the times we visited my grandparents and I loved it. I'm glad to have it in my possession. She is named Rebecca Ann. I wish I had thought about using Anne before I embroidered on her quilt. The dresses were adapted from some American girl 8" doll patterns. I don't know why I don't change her dress to the pink one, once in a while. Making doll clothes is a challenge. Working with small pieces can be a pain in the neck, but I've made smaller. When I was young and playing with Barbie dolls, clothes for them was too expensive even then for mothers with 4 children and little money, so she sewed them. Many of them. What patience!! It must have taken a lot of time, as well. I appreciate her hard work more now than then. And I didn't make Barbie clothes for my girls.

The stroller this doll is in belonged to my Aunt Wanda, who got it from a friend who had two. Originally it had a maroon vinyl body and when it wore out, Grandma made a new one out of some hideous looking ticking type material. That didn't matter to me one bit as a kid. I loved it because it was old. I replaced the stripe with this maroon fabric, but I wasn't able to figure out the double hood apparatus, so it's not done right. I have photos of how it looked originally and of the material Grandma used. It may be in this blog and it may not.

The coat and hat live on this doll so I can admire my handiwork. It's made out of material I used for a suit for myself back in the day and it's made for an 18" doll, who lives now down in the doll area because I have grandchildren. That is another story. There were two dolls that belonged to Jim's sisters and they were named for two of our friends, Jason and Holly, no matter that they were both girls dolls, and Jason and Holly they still are today. 

In my cleaning out, I found these old skeleton keys and Grandpa's first glasses. The house I grew up in had skeleton key locks that didn't work anymore and I saved them because they were old. It's the same thing with the glasses. They are old and they were Grandpa's. 

 

Time For School

My dad was  into models for a few years. He made ships and airplanes that are still around and we don't know what to do with them. I remember the painstaking gluing and painting and stickers. I don't remember how or where I got this old fashioned desk to put together. I've always been interested in old fashioned things. I loved the Little House books and they influenced me. I don't know if it came from Dad or not. I know he encouraged me in the making. I had to sand and stain the wood and glue it together. I took it upon myself to make the pencil, slate and books. I had two of these for some reason or other. This one I'm keeping for now. 

 

I Remember...

I remember...

Coming home from my paper route at 7 am and Mom would be weeding in the garden. 

Mom sitting in her chair by the dining room bay window reading and eating the white from the inside of orange peels. 

When Mom made fried chicken and milk gravy, we ate the gravy on slices of bread, not mashed potatoes and I thought that was the best thing ever. I didn't miss the potatoes. 

Roast beef nearly every Sunday for dinner and I made the gravy. Sometimes, I mashed the potatoes.

Potato soup, thin, poured over a slice of Velveeta. Or peanut butter popcorn, or fried egg sandwiches and sometimes waffles for Sunday supper.

Winter evenings at home with all of us in the dining and living rooms, reading, playing or doing homework. (We only ate in the dining room on special occasions.)

Pulling out the couch so we could play behind it, or piling up the cushions to ride on.

Andy making train or race tracks from the encyclopedias that took up most of the living room. 

Mom letting the boys make a horrendous amount of noise banging on pans. 

I remember...

Dad had a glass of Pepsi every day. We got some if we got hurt.

Dad sitting in bed having a bowl of ice cream and doing the OWH crossword before he went to sleep.

Playing catch with Dad.

I remember...

Learning to make tuna casserole and burning the onion flakes the first time, like Mom always did. Mom's tuna casserole had peas in it and biscuits on top. 

And making peach cobbler. About the same as the tuna without the peas and onions. Or cherry cobbler. Dad always poured milk on his helping. 

Making Dad's coffee, just so, with milk and sugar. And the way he always stirred sugar into the milk before adding cereal. 

Making fried eggs for Dad. We carried the water in the lid to dump in the egg pan so the yolks would be covered. 

I remember...

Black walnut and lemon custard homemade ice cream with the hand crank until we got an electric one. 

Andy having a huge bowl of chocolate malt-o-meal cooked cereal for breakfast and Mom letting me eat leftovers on days I couldn't face an egg for breakfast. 

Leaving with Dad at 7:30 to ride to the high school instead of taking the bus. Dad taught social studies there for 34 years. 

Teaching Tim his letters and numbers and how to ride a bike. 

I could go on an on.

I Never Thought I Would...

If there was one place I loved more than home it was my grandparents' ranch in the Sandhills.  We visited twice a year, in summer and during Christmas vacation, since my dad was a teacher and those were the easiest times to go.

The memories from those visits still give me those "feelings" in my heart that can't be explained.  I was remembering one about my grandpa the other morning as I was drinking my hot weak tea.  Grandpa didn't like mushy things and I took after him, but as he got older he would eat his morning burnt toast with hot water poured over it.  I thought then and for several years, that I would never drink only hot water. 

Well, I do, because after cancer surgery and treatment leaving me with a dry mouth, warm water feels a lot better and goes down a lot easier than cold. 

A New Bedroom

 When we first moved into our house on West Park Street in 1969, my sister and I slept in the south bedroom upstairs which was dark with paneling.  Outside the windows was the porch roof on which I daringly sat a few times, but never without my parents knowledge -- maybe.  And, that would have been after we moved to the north bedroom and it belonged to my brothers.  The middle bedroom was Dad's "study", in there he had the chaise lounge we loved to lay on, and his TV.  It was that year, that we watched the moon landing.  When that room was turned into Mom and Dad's room, Dad having moved his books and TV to the basement, we chose the north bedroom. I think we chose it only because it was not the room we were currently in.  My brothers used the south bedroom after they were born anyway, which was after 1969.

The only way to get into the upstairs bathroom was through that north bedroom, so Dad took out the door, closed in the wall and made a door in the room we called "the kitchen" because at one time the upstairs was a separate apartment and that was the kitchen. (The sink and cupboards were still there, and we used it for storage and a playroom) Mom let my sister and I pick the carpet and paint colors.  We chose gold high/low carpet and lavender paint.  Our dressers were painted purple and Mom or Dad made bulletin boards painted lavender with purple trim.  When we got along we put our beds together, when we weren't we made an imaginary line down the middle.  There were two closets in that room.  One was the product of the door removal and was a small ordinary sized closet.  The other one was big enough for me to get all the way in for a private space.  Eventually, I wanted a shelf, desk height, so my sister and I walked to the "lumber yard" 3 1/2 blocks away, and carried away a 1 x 12, after charging it.  I don't know how long it was, 8 ft. maybe, with me on one end and my sister on the other, we carried it between us all the way home. That board made more shelves than the desk and when I was feeling like I needed to be by myself I would work in that closet. 

When I was a girl I was enchanted by stories of the pioneers and wished long dresses were "in." In the 70s, mini skirts were out and our skirts fell just below the knee.  If Mom didn't make our clothes, we wore hand-me-downs. I had a long skirt made out of quilted material. It was long and just right for wearing in that closet in the cold upstairs. One winter mom made us "night caps" to wear with our long flannel nightgowns. Eventually, I suppose we grew out of flannel nightgowns, but they were warm on cold nights.

The upstairs in our house ran on a different thermostat than the downstairs and it was kept at 55 degrees in the winter.  Hot water radiators make the best heat, but it takes time to heat up. There were times when we'd turn up the heat to warm up our pillows and blankets before turning it down again and snuggling under our pile of heavy quilts for the night.