So what does my new project have to do with vintimagery anyway?  Well, I’ll tell you.  This outfit took hours.  I bet I spent 10 hours in embroidery and hand stitching and about 1 in all other sewing and cutting.  It’s ridiculous in the modern sense of things. I could have whipped out a servicable jumper that would have been sweet and darling in less than an hour.  But I didn’t.  I imagined this outfit, I dreamed it up, and I executed it.  (Why does that sound so fatalistic?) 

 

As I sewed, I remembered the book Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter.  As Freckles is lying in a hospital bed and has given up on life, “Angel” tries to snap him out of it.  He declares he’d find life worth living if only he had proof that his mother “didn’t do it.”  So, Angel hurries off to the orphanage determined to get the clothes he arrived in and examine them.  If they were embellished and sewn with tiny careful stitches, it’d prove (in the mindset of the day) that he was beloved and his mother took great pains with what she had to outfit her baby.  Of course the clothing was beautifully and meticulously stitched and they all lived happily ever after.

 

That scene has swirled in my mind over the years.  I’d whip out a jumper with as little work put into it as possible knowing that the first time a child wore it, it’d probably be torn.  Why add those touches when it’d look terrible in no time?  Don’t get me wrong, I know that they used to think exactly like I do.  I know they used to have to mend and patch as often or more than I do  I know these things.  But, they made clothes prettier then anyway.  They took the time to make pinafores to protect them and while those who worked hard from sun up ’till sun down and didn’t have the money or time to add embellishments to their children’t clothes stuck with plain and serviceable, those in the middle classes, tried as they could to give their children a sense of beauty and showed their love and care for their families with embroidery, special sewing techniques, and careful stitching.  It won’t kill me to do the same thing from time to time.

 

Of course, I live in the twenty first century.  I can use time saving devices and modern techniques to speed up the process.

 

Oh, and one more thing!  Just like the frugal housewives of the Depression era, this outfit features recycled fabrics!  Yep, that denim I cut from the legs of Daddy’s jeans.  Lorna will wear him near and dear to her heart.