Fun and Versatile Easter Dress

I have this new thing I do now, I only buy or sew knit clothing.  Why?  It stretches.  I am darn tired of having to pass down some of my favorite outfits because they no longer fit over my shoulders, arms or thighs.  So that’s it, knit or nothing.

For Easter this year, I wanted something fun, bright, modestly styled and knit.  I picked out a great retro pattern from Butterick.  A 1946 dress with detail in the piecing of the dress.  It falls just below the knees and while isn’t form fitting, isn’t a potato sack either.

Fabric

It’s fully lined, which turned out to be a very good thing for the bright yellow jersey knit I chose.  I selected skin-tone dance fabric for the lining.  Super slippery, not the easiest to sew on, but the finished product looked right.  The dress has a belt that goes with it.  I made two, one in matching yellow, and one in a contrasting green so I have options. 

Between the jersey knit and the slippery dance fabric, my machine kept jamming, sucking fabric into the bobbin case.  Mommy had a great solution: paper.  I put scraps of paper between the fabric and the machine at the start of each seam.  The paper prevented the fabric from being sucked below deck, and then I just tore the paper off the seam when I was done.

Modifications

The dress is supposed to have snaps on the bodice where the left shoulder piece meets the bodice front.  I chose not to put the snaps because 1) I’m lazy, and 2) the snaps would either be only sewn to the lining, causing the bodice front to droop, or the snaps would have to be sewn through both layers, which would be ugly.  Instead, I choose a pin or broach from my collection when I wear the dress.  It gives me more options in accessorizing the dress.   The dress is also supposed to have a side zipper.  That’s one of the awesome benefits of doing everything in knit.  No zipper needed!

The hardest part of the  dress was trying to install the shoulder pads.  The dress really needed them, especially with how much the knit drapes.  But try as I might, I just could not get the foam dolman shoulder pads sewn in.  When I could get them set properly, the stitches would tear out of the foam.  My final solution, I tape them in with fabric tape when I wear the dress.  This actually has an added benefit.  The shoulder pads are hand-wash only.  Since they’re removable, I don’t have to hand wash the whole dress.

Variations

For Easter, I used a large gold and peachy-brown butterfly broach on the bodice and wore my green belt with green shoes.  On my birthday, I wore the yellow belt and used a pewter sun-hat pin with a red flower on it and wore my red pumps.

Pattern: Butterick B5281

Whatever Happened to the Sabbath?

My church (which is on Facebook, and Twitter) is doing a number of small group studies for Lent.  Every group covers the same topic each week, and that topic is related to Sunday’s service as well.  Pretty neat.  One of the groups is structured around writing.  It’s being led by our Pastoral Intern and she’s posted some of her writing for the group on her blog. 

It’s pretty neat and though I’m not as brave as her to share so much, I thought I’d give it a try and share my writing for this week on the topic of Sabbath.  (Last week was on prayer; we wrote psalms.)

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Sabbath.  I can’t hear or see the word without thinking “nsabata,” the Tonga word for “Saturday.”  Having the word built into the week like that was a constant reminder.  “What is today?”  “Sabbath.”  “Rest.”

As Easter draws near, I long for Sabbath.  I miss it fiercely.  That week I used to find some way to set aside.  “What denomination does that?”  Because it’s not a valid religious practice unless sanctioned by some denomination.  Yet, I made it happen.  Me and God, me and a dorm room, a hut, an apartment.  Me and myself and fear, of the dark, of boredom, of being alone.  Me and God and calmness and peace.  It seems impossible now.  The world calls.  How can one disappear for a whole week?  But the world called then, too.  And yet, I found Sabbath.

Now, my Sabbath comes in smaller doses.  An evening knitting.  A BART ride with closed eyes and a prayerful heart.  A deep breath.  A hug.  A connection to God and God’s world that may not last for days or hours, but long enough to listen, long enough to stop, long enough to be.

I still miss that week.

Eggs, Friends and a New Dress; What Else Does a Girl Need?

It’s only Saturday night, Mr. Trizzle isn’t even here yet, and I’ve already had one of the most amazing weekends ever!

But that’s not what I want to tell you about today.  Today, I want to tell you about Easter.  Easter is my favorite holiday, absolute favorite.  Everything about it is my favorite.  My favorite season, my favorite church hymns, my favorite Bible stories, my favorite candies, my favorite dresses, my favorite shoes, everything.

Easter morning started out perfectly.  Mr. Trizzle and I got dressed up and went to church together.  The service was beautiful, well I thought the service was beautiful.  Mr. Trizzle referred to it as “boring white people church” or something like that.  Although, he did agree the bell choir was amazing.  Those Methodists, they can really play their bells!

I shouldn’t complain.  Mr. Trizzle comes to church with me on Easter because he knows how important it is to me.  This is the fourth Easter since Mr. Trizzle and I met.  Of those four Easters, there was only one where we didn’t go to church together.  Last year, he was living out here and I was in Nashville.  I spent Easter at home with Mommy & Daddy and Daddy Bunny in Milwaukee.

After church, we had a big brunch, hung out with Mr. Trizzle’s mom and The Legend and looked for our Easter baskets.  Mr. Trizzle, his mom and The Legend took a little while to find their baskets, but eventually did.  Looking for mine wasn’t that fun.  Somehow, I seemed to know exactly where it was.  Maybe I have a telepathic connection with the Easter Bunny.

Our baskets were filled with goodies: our favorite candies, plastic eggs, hardboiled eggs colored all pretty, chapstick and Pez dispensers.  Well, most of us got Pez dispensers.  Not The Legend.  He got a set of 10 forks.  Now maybe I’ll be able to find more than 1 fork in the kitchen at any given time.

After brunch and basket hunting, Mr. Trizzle, his mom and I hung out and played dominos.  (The Legend had gone off to the City with his own mother.)  It was a lot of fun.

Ok, ok, now for the most important part (second-most, after the whole resurrection thing): the dress.

 (Full-length picture with the requisite Mr.Trizzle looking-as-though-he-is-only-in-the-picture-for-compliance-reasons look, which is true.)

This year’s Easter dress was a Regency gown.  Mr. Trizzle’s my Mr. Darcy, so it’s only fitting I look like Elizabeth, right? ;)  I had basically made the dress a number of months ago, but it wasn’t quite finished.  Just before Palm Sunday, I added the button-holes and laces on the back of the dress.  And on Easter, like years of Easter dresses before it, it made it’s debut.

I’d had the fabric for a long time but never knew what to make with it.  Light beige, almost ivory, with little shoes all over it.  By sheer coincidence, Mr. Trizzle had chosen a similar colored tie with shoes on it.  We matched!

The dress has removable sleeves, just like an original.  I decided to forgo the sleeves when one came unbuttoned and I couldn’t reattach it with the dress on.  To stay warm, I opted for my short sweater, styled very similar to Regency gown jackets.  No new Easter shoes this year.  I wore my high-heeled Timberland boots that I absolutely love.  Figured they were period-appropriate.  I like the dress a lot and hope to wear it again as soon as I get around to doing the laundry.

Hoppy Easter

[guest post by Daddy Bunny]

My mom seems to like to use me to deliver surprises.  When she came home for my Auntie Munchkinhead’s 16th birthday, she put me on Auntie’s sink and hid in the sewing room.  Auntie Munchkinhead came into the bathroom still rubbing her eyes from sleep.  “Daddy Bunny, what are you doing here?” she said to me.  Then she went into the hallway, holding me in her hands and saw my mom.  Group hug!  Mind if I kiss the rabbit?

Well, this morning, my mom got up very early, and before she went to get ready for church, she placed me outside my grandparents’ bedroom door with some candy in my paws.

Friday night, mom came home from church and started packing.  She was smiling so big!  I had no idea what was going on.  She usually tells me if we’re going somewhere.  She hadn’t said anything.  The next morning, she placed me and my sister, Whiskey, next to the bag she had packed the night before.  Next thing I knew, Whiskey and I were buckled in the front seat of the car and we were off somewhere.

Whiskey told me she guessed we were going home because she had said next time there was a visit to Grandma’s she wanted to go along.  I watched the familiar highway go past and decided she was right.  But then, our car got off the familiar highway.  We were on these teeny back roads, going through strange towns.  The stuff outside the window was all very pretty, but I had no idea where we were.

Turns out Whiskey was right.  After many hours we saw home.  We drove past it slowly and went to a gas station.  Whiskey and I were very confused.  We came all this way, weren’t we going to go home?!  Our mom got out of the car and came back sometime later in her pajamas.  Then, we went home. 

We parked down the street and walked up to the house.  Our mom had taken a key off her keyring.  She put the key in the lock, it didn’t turn.  She took another key of her keyring.  It worked.  Very, very quietly, we all snuck into the house.  Our mom took her shoes off as soon as she got in, picked us up and went into Grandma’s living room.

Whiskey and I were confused again.  I had told Whiskey that when we go home, we sleep in Auntie Alfred’s old room that now has two beds and this strange greenish color on the walls.  This was no bed in Auntie Alfred’s old room, this was the couch!  But the three of us piled onto it, covered up with Grandma’s orange afghan, and took a nap.

The next morning, Grandpa got up and saw me sitting outside his door.  He said, “there’s a Daddy Bunny outside our door.”  Grandma ran over to me, “if there’s a Daddy Bunny, that means Daddy Bunny’s mommy is here too!”  She picked me up and we started looking through all the bedrooms.  Nothing.  Then we went downstairs and looked.  Finally, Grandma found my mom, sitting at the breakfast table, dressed like the Easter Pirate.  (Whiskey wanted to be an Easter Bunny too, like me, so she was wearing the bunny ears and our mom was left with the pirate hat.)

Grandma was so happy!  It was wonderful.  Then Grandma helped me find my Easter basket.  It was full of yummy carrots. :)  Whiskey and I spent the day sitting before the fireplace, watching everyone play games and have fun.  Happy Easter!