Late 1930's White Blouse and Creamy Yellow Jumper

My latest historical persona was to be a lady from the late 1930's, so I decided to use Wearing History's late 1930's jumper and blouse pattern! In a most frugal fashion, reflecting the  Great Depression, I used white fabric found in my fabric stash leftover from a previous project (specifically my 1860's sheer white gown).  Even more frugal was my choice of jumper fabric.  I cut out the required pieces from my yellow Edwardian skirt, which was too short for me.


I loved the sheerness and pattern of the white fabric.


For the jumper I made my first ever bound buttonholes.  For guidance I used Wearing Histoy's own tutorial! Lauren makes gorgeous bound buttonholes.    


I worked oh so hard to be utterly precise...




However the final product wasn't anything to brag about.  Perhaps I'll do a better job next time?


In fact, I fiddled and puzzled quite a bit over the jumper, primarily because the fabric is a synthetic. My comfort zone is natural fiber...therefore the white blouse came out exactly as I had envisioned it! It was a dream to sew! Being cotton it was difficult to turn the tube for the ties, and I flipped them backwards or something. So I undid the machine stitching and whip stitched them by hand.  I tend to do better with hand sewing than machine sewing. Nevertheless, most of the blouse and jumper are machine sewn.






For our 1930's history presentation I portrayed Winston Churchill's daughter, which was a lot of fun! I enjoyed using one of Churchill's books as a prop while posing for these photos!



















Also while watching Wizard of Oz, I noted that Dorothy's dress is very much like this pattern, so I decided to enter this into the HSF fairytale challenge.

Now for the HSF details:



The Challenge: #6 Fairytale

Fabric: cotton and polyester

Pattern: Wearing History

Year:1930's

Notions: thread, buttons

How historically accurate is it? quite

Hours to complete: lots

First worn: history presentation

Total cost: $30

National Harbor...and a Tropical Dress for Me-Simplicity 5496

I made my first visit to the National Harbor on the Potomac River on the Maryland side, near Washington DC. Walking along the harbor itself was a great thrill!



Here are some before dinner shots. Obviously the weather was warm if I'm dressed like this! This was our warmest day all week, over 70 degrees.



I'm wearing a dress I had sewn for myself a few years ago. Not many people know that I also sew modern clothing, so I thought I'd share. I was recently asked to enter a modern sewing contest and was asked to submit my best historical gown to be considered as one of the top 4 entrants. I was a bit confused by that, but I did. lol In the I came in runner-up, however I've been asked to compete weekly anyway. It's absolutely okay I didn't make the top 4, but I realized that I have little on my blog about the other era of sewing I do, the current era! This dress was whipped out in speedy time without any trouble with fitting, a rarity for me!  There's even a cute little bow tie in back.


After dinner sunset...




Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" powerfully boomed over the loudspeakers of the pier...

Snow for Spring!

We were warned that more snow could come, and it had the potential to be huge!  Never have I experienced such a late spring in NoVA before. There were no leaves on trees nor flowers to be found anywhere.  Everything was still dead and brown looking.  The latest spring ever. At least we were consoled to only expect a trace of snow.  Surprisingly, we awoke to this:


It snowed throughout the day.  Much of it melted.  Had we stayed below freezing the entire day, my son and I estimated we could have accumulated 8-10 inches of snow.


These pictures are from 1pm.When we went to bed that night, it was still snowing!  The next morning I went to the grocery store and was chatting with the cashier, who drives to work from an hour north of us. She gets up at 3am to arrive at our store by 5am to work. She said it was still snowing early this morning!  I can't imagine what the total accumulation would have been if we had stayed below freezing the entire time.

Rotating Geometry for Spatial Reasoning

My daughter is becoming a whiz at her latest round of vision therapy homework. Basically she's rotating geometric objects in her head!

Blocks, Cameras, and Spatial Reasoning

While my daughter was working on her vision therapy homework, my son got involved...



Photography is another great way to work on spatial reasoning skills...


My son is great at this. My daughter avoids camera usage, so I'm always looking for fun ways to draw her in. Digital cameras are so great, because then the photos can be analyzed to see if a shot needs to be retaken. Also we can discuss: "Did you get the angle you were trying to achieve?" OR "Can you duplicate the angle your brother took?" "Now let me try to duplicate your image." Playing back and forth like that can develop eye tracking and spatial reasoning. We do this all the time, especially when my daughter takes pictures of me in my newly sewn garments. "Let's look at this image to see if it's the best angle for the blog."



On another matter, I could have titled this Spatial Reasoning meets Physics. My son was taking Physics II at the time...



He arranged the blocks as most precariously as possible, then we took various angles to make it look even more interesting.











So much creativity in the mere simplicity of a block.

Snow to End Spring Break!

I've neglected to share our most recent photos of spring!  My daughter ended a week of spring break last week. On Monday morning she prepared to go to class but found this standing in her way...



Classes were cancelled...again!


We had 8-10" of snow fall throughout the day, after having been promised this would never happen this late in March!


Did I mention it was St. Patrick's Day? Um, no green here today.