While I take offense at people thinking my hobbies are pioneer-like, I was cutting out the latest blouse Friday night and had a flash. And the flash had to do with Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I was working with very, very nice cotton lawn. Cotton lawn is lightweight, tightly woven, and very crisp. It’s so lightweight it felt like I wasn’t cutting through anything while I was cutting out pattern pieces.
I was being careful to line up the pattern pieces, and enjoying the fabric, and admiring the print (pink and purple at the same time!) when I thought, “Wait a minute…something’s familiar here–oh my God, I’m in a passage from a Little House on the Prairie book.”
For Laura’s summer dress they bought ten yards of delicate pink lawn…The lawn was so crisp and fresh, the colors so dainty, that Laura was afraid to cut it lest she made a mistake, but Ma had made so many dresses she did not hesitate. She took Laura’s measurements; then, with her dressmaker chart, she made the pattern for the waist, and fearlessly cut the lawn.
So maybe I should just EMBRACE my inner Laura after all. At least the finished blouse will look more like a little girl’s smock from 1968 than a shirtwaist from 1890. (I think that’s a good thing.)
And did you catch the part in the quote about Ma MAKING the pattern? Not only were there no sewing machines in 1890, you had to know pattern drafting, too.