A couple of dresses & a shirt

I have been hopelessly looking for the perfect dress for years now. Something that is comfortable, easy to wear during the summer and winter. Of course something with pockets. I want something very simple in the design, that will show off the fabric.  For a long time I drooled over these dresses at Tumbleweed in Portland. They are all very cute, simple lines and beautiful fabric. Looking at the dresses I always felt that I could make one that would be perfect for me. I even had a dress that was very close to what I wanted, I bought it at a garage sale and wore it till the fabric started to give out at the underarms. I called it the summer Christmas dress because of the colors. I should just take it apart and make a pattern from this dress, but for some reason I keep thinking that I will find a pattern that would be just perfect. 

When I first saw the Dottie Angle Dress Simplicity 1080, I thought this is it. But I had some problems when I made the first one, I might have made it too small. I believed the finished measurements thinking that I would make it a little more form fitting by making a medium. It does fit but I have a feeling I will rip out the seam under the arm the first time I wore it and was too active...like gardening. So I made another one this time I made a large. It was a little too big, the arms gaped and it felt like and looked like a potato sack. I had a friend over watching me make the dress and we decided to cut off the strange flap of the sleeve, thinking that a sleeveless dress would be nice, we also put in bust darts because it looked like it needed them when I tried the dress on. This did not improve the drape of the dress. The fabric was a quilting cotton so it did not drape as nice as I thought it would. Of course after a couple of washings it may loosen up. I like the fabric and I have not give up on this dress or the pattern. I just have to find the way this pattern will fit me. I may need to adjust the darts or try something different with the sleeves.

The next pattern I found that I thought would be great is from "A Verb for Keeping Warm" called Endless Summer Tunic. I really liked the simplicity of the dress and it had pockets. Well after the making two dresses that I felt were fails, at least for now, I decided to try the Endless Summer Tunic. It's a very simple layout and really the directions are very simple, thought I would like some illustrations as I'm a very visual learner. I used thrifted sheet to make a muslin. I liked the dress but when I was done I tried it on and Oh WOW it was short. I also think I need to make it one size larger. That seems to be a theme for me right now...one size larger. Maybe I will get someone to actually take my measurements so I can get this right. Interesting enough while I was looking for other images of the dress I found a blogger that made one of the Endless Summer Tunics in the Alabama Chanin Style.  I can't wait to try the pattern in a knit. 

Which brought me back to my favorite pieces of clothing...anything from Alabama Chanin. I had made one of the long sleeve shirt a year or so ago...that was a fail..I used some very strange jersey that had very little stretch. I decided to try it again as I really love loose long sleeve shirts in the winter. They are great under sweaters. I had bought what looked and felt like a tissue jersey at a resale store. I started to hand sew the shirt together but the thin material was almost impossible to work. The seams looked terrible all bunched up and very fragile looking.  So I took out what I had already sewn and used my serger to make the shirt. I used a rolled hem on the neck line and along the bottom of the shirt. It's very thin fabric and I will see how it lasts. I struggled the entire time with this material,  I believe the reason this 2 yards of material was at the resale shop was because the grain was off. But we shall see, for now I have a simple undershirt to wear this winter. I have a couple of things coming from Alabama Chanin that I bought at the Orange and Black sale last week, I can't wait to start another hand sew project. 

Hood River in October

Sunday was my 8th anniversary. We wanted to head out of town for the night so we went to Hood River. We started the day at Salty's on the Columbia for their sunday brunch. My husband wanted an old fashion buffet brunch where you can eat anything you want, where they and men carving prime rib and making omelets. It turns out Salty's is the only place that does that type of thing any more. they had wonderful bowls of crab but other than that it was kind of uneventful. The bacon was good and so was my drink.
After brunch we headed out the Gorge to Hood River. It was kind of overcast but I had hopes that the sun would be out in Hood River. We stopped at Multnomah Falls to get a photo and a crushed penny. The falls was full of tourists and we fled after watching the train go past.
We stayed at the Hood River Hotel in downtown Hood River. It was a nice place the room looked out over the Columbia River. It was also the harvest festival weekend so the town was hopping. We walked around looking at murals and sculpture. Though I was not fond of the yellow woman the sunset lit really up the mountains on the Washington side of the river. On monday we took a drive up highway 30 stopping at a view point called Memaloose State Park Overlook, overlooking Memaloose Island.  Lewis and Clark called Memaloose Island "Sepulchar Island". It was one of several islands commented on by Lewis and Clark as containing burial vaults for the Indian tribes that lived along the Columbia River. Up that hight on the cliffs my husband posed by the Fleetwood, man that thing glides down the curvy roads of the old Columbia River Highway. We stopped in The Dalles and had breakfast at a place called Cousins, we got in right behind a group of over 50 people from a church in Salem. It was a cute place with a motel attached. They had the walls lined with preserves, green beans, cherries, corn, and peaches...to name a few. We then headed to the the local thrift store when I found a wonderful pair of curtains for $9. They look great in our living room, they really warm up the room. Winter is coming and it was time for a change. It was a nice weekend, but it's also nice to be home with the kitties too. 

Moving mother and a couple of thrift store finds

The last couple of weeks have been me helping to get my mother's things packed so she could move to town. It's a long story but we wanted her closer so we could respond to there strange and frantic calls. We found her a nice little 2 bedroom place in a retirement community close to everyone else but me. How did I get so lucky, I don't even get a spare key. Any way while cleaning out my dad's desk I came across 4 envelopes with the kids names and their birth year. My father was collecting the money from the year of each of our births. I was actually born in 1962. Oh well I have all the coins from 1963. 
After packing so much of my mothers stuff I decide to drop off some of the stuff at a thrift store. So of course I had to go in. I found this lovely aqua, green and grey quilt top. When I brought it home I thought my husband would be mad that I was bring home more crap from my mothers (I have 3 bags of paperwork from the early 80's). When he saw the quilt top he asked for it to be a curtain for the back room...Oh yea, why yes it can. I love all the bright colors and the fussy cuts for the mermaids, birds and butterflies. All I have to do it back it and I have a new curtain for the back room, if I line it like a quilt it will help keep the draft down. I think I win either way. 
The other thing I have been looking for at thrift stores are needle points. I want to make a small bag using a needle point like the one I saw here.  I use to see needle points all the time but now that I actually want to use one to make something they are difficult to locate. I need ones that has tight stitching so things will not snag the yarn and break it. I found the above needle points recently, the top one was in a free pile next door. It was framed, when I unframed it I found the original tag for, I believe, the piece before it was stitch, the pattern was made in Israel. The second one was found at the goodwill bins in a stack of frames. I took the needle point out of the frame and left the frame. It's a very Thomas Kincade type of illustration. Not my favorite but it's a good piece to use as practice and I think it cost me about $1.  
The place my mother moved into has west facing windows and gets a really nice amount of light. We hope it will also keep her warm. She is always cold, no matter how high the heat is in the house. We also provided her with several warm lap blankets.

Pickled Asian Pears, Bread & Butter Pickles, Pickled Hot Peppers and some more Tomato Sauce

I was a little busy this last week becasue everything in the garden is exploding. All the peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes need to be picked. Also a woman came into the Tool Library brought me a bag of Asian Pears. I had to get busy and get some things preserved before they started to go bad. 

I started with the Asian Pears since it was a new recipe. I found the recipe on my favorite blog about canning Food In Jars. Marisa made these Pickled Asian Pears with Lemon from a book on she received called Asian Pickles by Karen Solomon. The recipe is simple, I had almost everything except the Mirin. I wanted to stay true to the recipe so I went to the store to get Mirin...damn that stuff can be expensive. It was $11 for a pint bottle. You can order it on line for cheaper but I didn't want to wait to get it in the mail. I also used fresh ginger instead of pickled ginger in the brine. I have never had asian pears so I was unsure if the pears were ripe, it seems they were a little on the crisp side. Since I was pickling the pears I was not too worried as I wanted something a little more crunchy. The receipe also does not use a water bath to preserve the fruit. You keep it in the refrigerator, it will keep for up to a month, which for is is not long enough. I don't know if I will eat 3 pints of pickled pears in a month. So I made another batch and gave them a water bath, we shall see which keeps longer. I also used the new vintage jars from Ball, I like the way to pears look in the blue & green jars, I don't think they look good in the purple jar. 

Next I had to get busy with the cucumbers. Because I had already made several batches of dill pickles a friend suggested Bread & Butter Pickles. I had some very large cucumbers and slicing the cumbers seemed the way to go. It again was an easy recipe from Food in Jars. Instead of using 2 red peppers, I used one red pepper and some of the home grown hot peppers from the garden. I have a lot of hot peppers. The only thing that throws me is you salt the cucumbers, peppers and onions for 4-12 hours to get a lot of the water out of the vegetables. The water is replaced with the brine. So I have to think ahead when making these pickles. I will wait for a week then open a jar to make sure the taste good, preliminarie taste test say they will be great, a little on the hot side but good. Of course I still had about 1/2 a grocery bag of hot peppers...so I pickled another batch. I put the peppers in half pint and quarter pint jars because I don't think you need a lot of hot peppers. I'm not sure if I can go through a jar in a month.

Last but not least was the tomatoes before they went south. I mean if i'm going to grow the things I need to make sure that I use them all up. Last week I made some marinara sauce. I cooked the tomatoes for a couple of hours then sautéed up some garlic and onions in a large frying pan adding the cooked tomatoes and letting the sauce simmered for about 4 hours. It got rave reviews from the group of folks staying at the house, not to mention it kept the house warm on a rainy day. Because of the sauce I realized that I need to simmer my tomatoes a lot longer then the recipe stated. It said to simmer the tomatoes for about 1-1 1/2 hours. They really taste a lot better when you let them simmer for about 4 hours reducing the sauce by about a third. I would also like to say I now love my food mill. All I do  is cut up the tomatoes, put them in a large sauce pan, mash them with a potato masher as they heat up. Let them boil for about 5 minutes then run the batch through the food mill a cup or two at a time. It gets all the seeds and skins out very nicely and makes for a great looking sauce. I return the tomatoes to the sauce pan, add some salt & pepper, a little garlic and if I want hotter tomato sauce I roast some peppers and put them through the food mill. It makes for a great base for any tomato based dish. 

Sewing baskets and drawers

Everyone that sews usually has a sewing basket of some sort, sometimes it's a small tin, some times its a large plastic container and some times it's really cool drawers that hold all your sewing notions. One of my favorite things to find at an estate sale is the sewing basket. They are usually filled with forgotten treasures and cool notions. A friends mother passed away a year ago and she told me that she found something of her mothers that she thought I would like. We saw each other a few times and she said I still have that thing for you, I will get it to you soon. About a month ago she brought that thing over to the All Girl BBQ. To my surprise it was a set of old thread drawers filled with sewing notions that belonged to her mother. The set of drawers alone are a beautiful gift, but then to open them and find all kinds of other cool things...well I was blown away. The items in the drawers were beautiful, old scissors, beautiful threads, cool boxes and brass military buttons were just a few of the items that I discovered in the drawers. I wanted to savor the drawers, like opening a present that has several layers I kept finding things that made me smile. The items in the drawers were things that her mother had treasured, put aside to use at a later date or just saved because of course if you sew you will use that piece of ribbon on another project. 
The top two drawers had thread. Lots of thread on old wooden spools and in lovely boxes. I have heard that using old cotton thread is not recommended because it does tend to deteriorate. I really don't know if this is true or not, I have used old thread that I had on hand when making clothes. To date I have not had anything come undone or rip because I used old thread. Does thread have an expiration date? I'm sure there are some that say yes but so far I have been lucky and not had problems. The third drawer had a lot of old buttons & needles, most of the buttons were brass military buttons. There were 2 other small boxes, a small box of beautiful dark glass buttons and what looks like a gift box of Coats & Clarke thread and Milward Helix Needles. The bottom drawer was filled with iron on patches, seam rippers and scissors. There were a couple of very cute little shears, one with very decorative handles. My friend put some very cute ribbon in the drawers for me specifically because it was decorated with cupcakes. I can't wait to use the ribbon on my next Dottie Angel dress. 
My friend said that she wanted it give her mothers sewing notions to someone that will cherish the things in the drawers and use them. Looking at everything in the drawers she probably could sell everything at an estate sale, all the vintage notions would bring a decent price, not to mention that the drawers themselves are very cute. I felt honored to be given a gift of someone else's sewing basket as these types of things are very personal for each and every sewer. I know I have some random things in my sewing basket and one day I will get all the baskets that I have collected together and put together one supper sewing basket. Till then I will go from basket to basket looking for the perfect thread, button or random sewing notion that I know I have somewhere in my collection. 

Dottie Angel Dress Simplicity 1080

I was very excited to finally get to make the pattern from Dottie Angel. It's a simplicity pattern 1080, and it was hard to find in the Portland area so I finally ordered it on line. I have been a fan of the Dottie Angel blog for a couple of years have always loved her style and in particular the house frock she was always wearing...it had nice large pockets. When I saw the pattern I knew it was a dress for me. I had several of the same problems that others had. The tucks were too high and the instructions for the arms was kind of funky. I have never put bias tape on the inside seams either. I'm glad I decided to make a muslin for this pattern as it was easy to fix what seemed to be fitting problems. Several others lowered the tucks by about 2" and did variations on the sleeve. I  removed the ties that go around the back. Thought I lower the side tucks and I think I can go even a little lower by about 1/2" or more as there is some strange gaping around the underarms. I like the pattern and it's pretty straight forward if you understand sewing. If I was a beginner I would have been very frustrated, I mean I was frustrated when I made the dress...it fit terribly...even my husband commented that it "fit weird". After researching on line about others problems here & here , you can also see Dottie Angel Facebook page that has several photos of the interior of the dress, these helped me a lot. The dress is super cute and when I made adjustments to fit my body it's really comfortable. I was happy that I made a muslin. The fabric that I used was an old sheet I got at the goodwill specifically to use the fabric for this type of project. Though now I want to dye the dress a little darker...maybe a blue. I can see myself making several of these over the winter months for next summer...or I can wear them all winter with a sweater...either way I see several more of these dresses in my future.